


Eros

by Sirifel



Series: A Triptych Of Myth [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Dealing With Trauma, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Metaphysical Force Fun, TLJ Continuation, rated T for the 5 or so reylo fans who don't always want explicit sex in their fic (myself included), sap, there IS sex but it's not explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-07-24 19:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16181564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirifel/pseuds/Sirifel
Summary: Eros created the earth and the sky, and then he made them fall in love.The Force is balanced, the prophecy fulfilled - or so it seems. Rey and Ben are left without a path to follow except that which they forge for themselves. Where do you go when your destiny is done?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to get this up sooner after finishing Orpheus, but, uh... it's been a weird couple of months. (I found out had cancer and then I got my boobs cut off. Yay!) I _am_ off work recovering for the rest of October, so hopefully the next chapter will be a bit more prompt.

Days inched by in a haze. Ben and Rey slept through most of the first one, letting Chewbacca and C-3PO mind the ship. Later, when lethargy gave way to nervous energy, Ben grew fretful of being followed. He was far from ready to deal with his mother or with Cardinal's traitorous First Order soldiers, and Rey had warned him that she had not been discreet with the name of the planet she was looking for. When his worries drove him to pacing and snapping at anyone who tried to calm him, the misfit crew agreed to move the ship out of its orbit around Arrakis.

It was a random point in deep space where they chose to linger, well out of the way of hyperspace lanes or of anywhere with meaning. There in the black, they began the strange process of deciding what to do with themselves.

"Leia would have you back," Rey told him, when the topic of family inevitably imposed itself on their morning routine. "She forgave you before I did."

"I know." It was true, despite all of his self-doubt and loathing. "But she's not the Resistance."

That was a point Rey could not refute, though she plainly wanted to. "She deserves to see you," she argued instead, and to that, Ben frowned and looked away.

"She deserves a lot of things I can't give her."

"Ben..."

His chest constricted and he tried to keep the grimace off his face. As often as not, Rey's concern only served to make him feel worse "Please give me more time."

It was a request he had already made and she had already given, but she nodded. "Okay."

With the discussion put back on hold, Ben fumbled through an attempt to make it up to her. He had never courted anyone before. He had never so much as asked anyone for romantic advice (and had done his best to ignore what his father offered). What little knowledge he had was harvested from holovids and childhood stories and was more than likely dramatized and unrealistic. But then again, he thought, so was everything else between him and Rey.

Recalling a scene from a vid long ago, he lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles, and when her lips twitched in response and she tilted her chin upward, he kissed her lips.

It was silly how much his heart fluttered. It was ridiculous how he could almost forget everything else—could feel nothing else but her. It wasn’t just the Force, although that too sparked and crescendoed with every touch. He might have compared it to being an adolescent boy, except that he had never felt such a way back then. Perhaps that was the reason. Perhaps first loves were alike at any age.

"Ben..." There was a note in her voice not quite of alarm, but of something close.

Belatedly, he realized that feeling nothing but her applied to the physical as well. They were no longer standing between the two beds in the Falcon’s main sleeping quarters. They had lifted off the floor, so subtle that he had failed to notice. They floated in the air together as thoughtlessly as if the ship’s gravity had switched off.

"It’s happening again," he observed, calmer than he felt.

"I'm not doing it." She sounded defensive, but she felt afraid.

"Are you sure?"

Rey’s eyes narrowed, not to glare but to concentrate. Slowly, as if moving against gravity rather than with it, they descended.

"You were doing it too," she chided.

"I know."

He watched the way her brow creased as she searched his face for answers. "Why is this happening?"

"We balanced the Force."

"I know, but why? What does that have to do with floating? Or moving things without meaning to? Or… always knowing what you’re feeling, even when I can’t hear your thoughts?" The last example came shyly, but it came as no surprise. Ben could sense her moods just as constantly since the convergence, as clearly as he could see her face.

"We're more attuned to it,” he said. “Or it's attuned to us." It was a blanket answer. He didn’t know why either, but it didn’t bother him the way it did her. "Why are you worried about it?"

"I'm not worried about it. I'm just trying to understand."

She was lying, but he let her keep it. Easing her fears was another area of deficiency for him—a skill set he had never learned. Time would do the job better than he could.

Time was another thing that felt new to Ben. Oh, he had toiled through periods of waiting in the past, impatient days spent in want and routine after one of the many times Luke or Snoke had told him he wasn’t ready yet. Waiting to be ready for his destiny was, it turned out, quite different from idling after said destiny was over. For the first time, he had no master, be it person or purpose. For the first time, his life was his own.

It felt something like torture.

Without the path of his birthright to follow, Ben was adrift, as aimless as is father's ship set to idling in oblivion. Other than the satisfaction of fulfilling his inherited prophecy, there was only one reason left to stay. One reason left to live at all. That reason, of course, was Rey.

He had known that balancing the Force would require a vessel of Light. He had not entirely believed, as Snoke had, that the vessel was Luke. Ben thought he would have recognized it sooner if that were the truth. He'd been having dreams since he was a child, visions of the Arrakis temple and of his purpose. He wasn't sure whether Snoke had opened his mind to those visions earlier than the Force intended or merely sensed the shape of them and taken advantage, but regardless of the monster's manipulation, Ben's destiny had always been the same.

He had dreamed, also, of Rey. They were fleeting, haunting images, more common in his youth. Before he ever met her, he had known the way she felt. He had sensed, in an abstract way, her importance to the galaxy, and he had felt less alone when he thought of her.

Now she kissed him again, for they had little else to do. She kissed him long and sweetly, hands coiling in his hair and caressing his face. Her fingers seemed to possess some magnetic attraction to the scar she had given him, yet each time she caught herself stroking it, she would stop. Her wariness amused him. He would never have asked her to treat him with such delicacy. He did not deserve it after how many times he had hurt her, but he found, in some deep and weary part of him, that he was desperate for it.

A resolution came upon him then, humbling in how obvious it should have been. He was accustomed to devoting his life to someone or to something outside of himself. He didn't know how to exist without that, and neither did he want to. Unless or until he found a more worthy purpose—and he doubted that he ever would—he would devote himself to Rey.

With their hands warm on each other's skin, their hearts and minds locked together like two halves of a perfect whole, it was easy to believe that nothing else would ever matter as much as she did.

Just as Ben was contemplating the benefits of levitating them both again, Rey's stomach growled.

He waited for her to react, but she ignored it.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have surprised him when she set hunger aside in favor of kissing him. Hunger was an old and familiar companion, less of a concern when food was more readily available than it had ever been in her youth. Kissing was, apparently, a far more immediate concern.

  
He had been in the process of changing clothes when their conversation began, it being as early in the Falcon's arbitrary morning as it was, and his shirt still lay across the bed. If the boldness of her hands was anything to go by, he suspected that Rey’s timing had been intentional. Every brush of her palms and fingertips over his bare, scarred skin tingled like electricity without pain, zipping up his spine to his brain and dangling him over the edge of dizziness. It might have been their unity in the Force that intoxicated him so, or it might have been as simple as a tender touch after too long without. There was, after all, more than one kind of starvation.

As if in reaction to that thought, Rey's stomach growled again.

This time, Ben pushed her away, although she pouted and fought back. It made him smile, and then it made him chuckle, and that was finally enough to stall Rey's fervor.

She met his eyes with a mixture of reproach and amusement. "We don't have to stop."

"Your stomach disagrees."

"That's never stopped me before." She pressed in to kiss him again, but he held her off.

"Before, you had to ration your food," he argued, still feeling the tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "You don't have to do that now."

That, at least, made her determination falter a little. “It's fine…"

Ben squared his bare shoulders… and then had to hold her firmly in place when she listed towards him again. "I'll cook for you."

"What?" Apparently it wasn’t an offer she had expected.

"You must be sick of those ration packs."

She looked at him with genuine confusion, brow furrowed and lips pursed. "Food is food."

Ben smiled again, without even having to try. "Stay here."

With eyes full of curiosity and—unbelievably—trust, she did.

The Falcon’s sleeping quarters had undergone a handful of transformations during the ship’s service. For Lando Calrissian, it had been a stately captain’s chamber, whereas Han and Chewbacca had angled for the space-saving practicality of a shared crew quarters. Later, after Han’s marriage and the birth of his son, it had become a family bedroom, and that was the state it had largely remained in. There were two beds—the original captain’s bed, wide enough for two and inset cozily into the wall, and the narrower bed with Ben’s name on it. A third bed put in by Han had later been taken out again to make room for a kitchenette, which Ben went to now.

Like so many other parts of the ship, it felt like stepping into a memory. Ben had stolen treats off this counter when he was small enough that he had to reach over his own head to get them. He had helped his father try to cook meals—failures, mostly—and asked many times for Chewbacca to lift him up so that he could pick out his favorite cup. The memories specific to this place were not sad ones, but it was easy to follow the trails they left, and every one of those would lead to darkness, whether the road they took there was long or short.

Quick as they had opened, Ben slammed shut the mental bulkheads between the present and the past.

Predictably, Rey didn't stay where he had told her to for long.

"What are you making?" She came to lean on the counter and peer around his shoulder while he arranged bowls and pans and ingredients in the small space.

"You'll see."

"Who taught you to cook?" she asked.

"A droid. And Luke."

"Not your parents?"

He glanced back at her, trying without much conviction to project a sense of impatience. "Are you only going to ask questions in this conversation?"

"What kind of droid?" The tone of her voice didn't change, but there was a laughter-flavored feeling across the Bond.

"A housekeeping droid. We had one when I was a kid."

"Do you always cook with your shirt off?"

Ben impressed himself by managing to keep a straight face. "Do you want me to put one on?"

Rey didn't answer right away. Instead, she let her knuckles trail up the expanse of his shoulderblade. It was a timid touch at first, stiff and hesitant as if she hadn't been mapping his chest so thoroughly a moment ago. When he did not pull away, she was emboldened again, taking the two small steps necessary to lean her entire self against his back. Only the thin cloth of her undershirt divided her from him. Her cheek lay warm and soft where her timid hand had been a moment ago. Her eyelashes tickled his skin.

Ben had to pause and collect himself before he could continue working.

Their relationship was a strange jumble of a thing. The first time they'd kissed hadn't felt like the first time at all, so familiar a gesture it had been. Likewise, nothing felt more natural than sleeping in the same room, guardian of each other's dreams.

Likwise, in their day-to-day camaraderie, it had proven more difficult to avoid physical contact than it was to maintain it, and that had little to do with the cramped quarters. They missed each other when they were apart, even if apart meant only an arm's length away.

"Did you sleep okay?" she asked him, as she had asked him the day before. As he hoped she would ask him again and again in the days to come.

"Most of the night."

"Me too."

Something from that long struggle against waking came back to him and an opportunity to tease her presented itself. "You were talking in your sleep."

"I was?" She sounded genuinely surprised. "What did I say?"

Ben cleared his throat and—for fear of being heard by the ship's other occupants—spoke in a very quiet falsetto. "'No, Master Luke, I don't want the green stuff'." He felt her smile against his back at his mimicry. "What did he _do_ to you on that island? It sounded traumatic."

Rey laughed, her breath hot and moist on his shoulder. "Could have been worse, I guess." Then she grew quiet and tense. "Is it okay to talk about him?"

"I'm fine." It was less of a lie than it had been before.

She turned her face to rest her forehead on his shoulder. "Good."

There was silence for perhaps half a minute while Ben tried to cook with her pinned to his back. It broke when Rey giggled.

"What?"

"I'm trying to picture you in your mask and cloak, cooking."

"I didn't cook when I was Kylo Ren."

"Oh. That must be the secret, then."

"What secret?"

"Of the Light Side."

Ben huffed, only to be momentarily mesmerized by the feel of her moving with the lurch of his shoulders.

"I'm serious," she argued, still soft. "Food can change your life."

"Says the scavenger."

"I know what I'm talking about."

"Yes, you do." Yet again he was smiling, and he must have been hypersensitive to the sensations of his own body, for the stretch of his lips felt new and wonderful. "... Hand me the Akivan pepper."

"Which one?"

He twitched a hand and the jar floated off the shelf. "This."

Grinning, Rey plucked it out of its airborn course and presented it to him.

"Smartass."

To that, she laughed.

The dish was one he had learned from Luke, chosen that morning only because it was one of the few they had all the ingredients for. Still, he had spoken the truth to Rey. It was easier these days for him to think about his uncle—not easy, but easier. He had a better understanding of what had happened, and while it did not erase the primal terror born in that last night of his youth, it helped him contain it. It helped him step back and see past it.

Rey helped him.

She hovered beside him now, watching every move he made. It would have been a nice gesture, he thought, to explain the steps to her, but small talk was a task that daunted him even on a good day, so he simply let her watch.

The dish wasn’t fancy, but it was one he had a rare fond memory of as a boy. He mixed and baked flatbreads from a bag of powder and set rehydrated vegetables to fry, seasoning them with the pepper she had helped him to retrieve and a sauce mix from another vacuum-sealed package. The bread cooked fast, and when it was done, he worked the flakey layers open and spooned the vegetables inside. Rey's eyes had stopped following his hands at some point and were glued on the food itself, so intent that he feared she would start scavenging bites from the pan if he didn't finish quickly enough.

"Go sit down," he ordered, and in her eagerness, she all but scurried back to the bed—his bed rather than hers. "It's hot," he warned, and came to hand her a plate.

"It smells _amazing."_

"It's the sauce."

She didn't answer because she was already picking and nibbling at the edge of the stuffed bread pocket, not patient enough to let it cool.

"I'll take a plate to Chewie."

Rey didn't react to what he had said, so neither did he, but the nickname had manifested itself unbidden for the first time in his adult life and he was not quite able to ignore the slip. Facing Chewbacca was a trial, but they were a crew, at least for the time being, and not sharing a meal with him would have been more awkward still.

Ben took the time to pull on a shirt before leaving the almost-comfort of the sleeping quarters. Chewbacca was in the cockpit, where he always was when he wasn't napping in the main hold or working on the ship's maintenance out of boredom. On that particular morning, he was slouched in the copilot's seat with a datapad in one massive paw. He did notlook up when Ben entered, but Ben knew better than to think his presence unnoticed.

"I made breakfast."

Chewbacca looked.

Ben closed the distance and handed him the plate.

 _"It smells good,"_ Chewie rumbled in Shyriiwook.

"That's what Rey said."

_"Thank you."_

Solemn, Ben nodded and left.

In the corridor on his way back to Rey, at the midpoint where the curve of the hull distorted the sounds from the rest of the ship, Ben stopped. Something had touched his right ear, soft and formless like a breath. His instinct was to shield himself, fortify his mental defenses. A warning touch had often preceded one of Snoke's painful tests. So well conditioned was the former Kylo Ren that his body responded before his mind, muscles tensing and heartbeat accelerating, yet there had been no hint of a threat in the touch. Someone or something was reaching out to him, and it wasn’t Snoke. It would be unwise to ignore it.

Cautious, like cracking open a door, he opened himself back up to the Force, questing outward with his senses, but no matter how far he reached, he could find no trace of a living presence except for those who belonged. Had it been a warning, then? A request? Or merely his senses adjusting to the newly balanced state of the Force?

Unnerved, he went back to Rey, and was mildly surprised to find that she had not devoured her entire meal in the span of absence. He caught her chewing with a look of meditative focus. She opened her eyes only belatedly to acknowledge him, smiled around her mouthful of food, and waited until she had swallowed to ask, "are you going to eat?"

“Maybe." He meant it to sound teasing, but the word fell flat. He could hardly blame her for her concern, given his less than stellar record for self-care. He refrained from saying anything else while he prepared his own plate and came to sit on the floor by her feet.

He regretted that choice as soon as it was made, turning his head away to hide his grimace when pain lanced through his injured knee.

"Ben?"

"Hmm?" He mumbled, aiming for nonchalance.

"What is it?"

"I'm fine."

"Liar."

He looked at his breakfast and thought about taking a bite, hoping Rey would drop the subject if he seemed sufficiently distracted.

"You should have rested more before you ran away to change the universe."

It was not the first time she had scolded him for that after their departure from Arrakis. "What's done is done."

She wasn't done. "If it hurts you too much, please tell me."

"I've had worse."

"I don't care."

He twisted around to look at her, ignoring the further distress it caused his knee. She was holding her plate on her lap, her hands on its edges to balance it. She wasn't eating. Ben found himself touched that she would deem something as trivial as as a mostly-healed wound more important than her meal.

Healing wounds, to him, were as common-place as food, and sometimes as nourishing. He opened his mouth to argue or to reassure her further, but the look in her eyes changed his mind. "... Alright."

She smiled again, just a little, and picked back up her breakfast.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, fun thing: they told me I wouldn't need chemo and then they changed their minds. I guess we'll see how 'more time off work' and 'feeling like shit' balance out as far as fic productivity goes. (but to be fair, I'm terrible at sticking to a steady schedule regardless. :p)

It was silly, foolish, and—an instinctive part of her left over from Jakku accused—a waste of water, but that didn't stop the dewdrop tears from forming at the corners of her eyes once she had finished her breakfast, pooling until she had to wipe them away with her sleeve.

"Rey?" Despite her efforts to hide her unwanted distress, Ben noticed.

"It's nothing, I'm fine."

"Are you?"

It wasn’t fair for him to press her after he had told the same lie. She sniffed, realizing only afterwards how much the sound betrayed her. "Yes."

"Rey..."

There was nothing for it. She couldn’t hide the state of her mind from someone who had been inside it—not without a great deal of effort, and certainly not in the morning over breakfast. "Sorry. I didn't mean to. It's just..."

"Just what?"

She scooted her rump over the edge of the bed and sunk down to sit beside him on the floor. "No one's cooked a... a whole meal for me before. Just for me." She laughed a little, forcefully, because she didn't want to start crying.

"Ah," he said.

"It's silly."

"No."

Trying to compose herself, she squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. "The food was good. Thank you."

"I'll cook for you again."

Rey made another not-quite-laughter sound. "We haven't really..." The words tumbled out before she could think better of them and she stopped herself, too late.

"Haven't what?"

"We haven't talked about what we are."

Ben's face was soft, giving her the impression of a smile without quite displaying one. It was, she realized, simply the absence of strain. "What we are?"

"Us," she waved a hand in the air, trying to feel out the shape of what she wanted to say. "This. Our, um… relationship."

"No," Ben said. "I suppose we haven't."

"Well?"

He regarded her with a look as serious as ever, but she could feel underneath it a sense of befuddled amusement. The rumbling deepness of his voice was a contrast to its tenderness when he asked, "what do you want to talk about?"

Rey looked down at the empty plate in her hands. "I don't know. It's all a bit complicated."

"Hm." It sounded like an agreement.

"I like being with you." The understatement was enough to make her wince. "I told you how I feel."

"You did."

"It's not really something I… have experience with." And still her own words embarrassed her. She'd managed to make it sound as if she was talking about repairing a type of ship she hadn't worked on before.

"Me either."

"I guess Snoke didn't allow you much time to mingle."

The usual strain returned to his face, obvious now that she'd noticed what he looked like without it.

"Sorry."

More silence.

"Ben?"

"Rey."

Even his expression of patience was intense. She found she couldn't quite meet his eyes just then, which left her gaze lingering on his mouth instead. "Never mind. I don't know where I'm going with this."

Slowly, as if afraid to startle her, he took her empty plate from her and set it on the floor. Then he took one of her hands in his, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed it, letting his lips linger on her knuckles while he spoke. "What do you want?"

She stared at his lips on her hand, unable to look away. "To be with you." It sounded so inadequate—so small. Perhaps there simply were not any words in any language in the galaxy to express what she wanted to say.

"In what way?"

"Like this." Feeling at once childish and ancient, inexperienced yet serene, She pulled her hand from his. She laid her palm on his cheek and lifted his face to meet hers, her lips to meet his.

He kissed her slowly. He let her lead. When she pulled away to breathe, he asked, quiet, "anything else?"

She let her gaze slide over his face, mapping dark eyes, soft lips, his funny constellation of moles, and the scar. "You taste like breakfast."

Ben's mouth twitched. "So do you."

She kissed him again.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Ben braced himself on his good leg and moved up onto the bed, guiding Rey with him. Hands explored faces and hair and then ventured downward. The thin gray shirt he'd put on was much easier to wrestle off again than his tunic and padded surcoat had been, though to be fair, her incentive was different. The last time she'd undressed him, it had been in dread of the injuries she would find underneath. Now she was eager to see those same scars, strange as the thought was, and to map them with her hands again and possibly her lips. It was new territory for her—attraction and romance—but she saw little point in holding back for lack of experience. That wasn't how Rey operated.

Ben seemed to be of the same mind. She could read it in the way his hands moved, not quite steady, but purposeful, outlining the dip of her waist and the curve of her hip. She knew it in the way his eyes closed, just lightly, when he put all of his focus on the sensation of touch. She knew it in the way he kissed her mouth, her cheek, her jaw, and then pressed his face into the crook of her neck and kissed her there too, making her breath catch and her heart pound.

Rey didn't know how far she meant to go, and she didn’t particularly care. She was experimenting, letting her desire lead her, and Ben was taking his cues from her. She could feel a sense of wariness from him, but for her it was all giddy curiosity. There was so much she had never had the chance for on Jakku, let alone the right partner. There was so much catching up to do, and for the first time in her life it felt like she had all the time in the galaxy.

Yet Ben was growing rapidly more nervous, despite how eagerly he had begun. She could feel it in the shuddering tension of his muscles as much as she could feel it in the Force. It hadn't stopped him, though, so it didn't stop her.

What stopped her was when she slipped her fingers under the band of his pants and he jerked violently away.

Rey froze, caught his gaze, searched his face for the problem. "What's wrong?"

He only shook his head and sucked in a breath.

"Ben?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry."

She waited. He moved again, reached out to touch her hair, closed the space between them to kiss her slowly. This time, she let him lead, but when his hands ghosted down to her waist and hers came to grip his thighs, he shuddered, and he stopped breathing.

"Ben..."

When he exhaled at last, it seemed to cost him an effort. "... It's fine."

She wanted to believe him, regardless of what her senses told her. She wanted him. So she held still. She let him try again. She let him touch her, but the throb of the Force between them had turned oppressive and it was Rey who had to push Ben's hands away, horrified by the fear he was projecting, wondering where it had begun and why it had come over him so suddenly.

"Stop—"

And even as she spoke, Ben was stumbling up and away from her. He caught himself near the door, standing with his feet set wide and his eyes wild. "I'm sorry," he said again, hoarse, and then turned his back on her and retreated down the corridor.

Something rattled through the air, a pulse, a surge, a shock that made Rey’s heart jump and confused her senses. In the underbelly of the ship, something creaked and snapped. The Falcon shuddered all over and from the cockpit came a bewildered wookiee howl.

Rey didn't think about it. She ran after Ben, afraid to let him be alone. Catching up to him in the corridor only made her stagger back, caught breathless by the solid wall of his emotions. He didn't look at her, he didn't talk to her, but he communicated—in feelings—in fragments of images—and Rey understood enough to let him go.

Chewbacca's roar echoed around the ship again and it was enough to drag Rey back from her confused despair. At least there was something she could help with. Taking two great breaths to steel herself, she ran for the front of the ship.

"What happened?!" she was shouting before she'd crossed the cockpit's threshold and squeezed past a panicking C-3PO.

 _"The fuel lines!"_ Chewie barked from his seat, and Rey moved to check the read-out.

"No way... But we fixed this!" They had more than fixed it. They'd bypassed the weakest points and reinforced everything else so it couldn't happen again. It should not have been possible. "You stay here," she told Chewie. "See how much you can reroute. I'll go find the break."

She had a fair idea where to look. The sound she'd heard when Ben ran had been telltale. Given the timing, she could guess at what had caused it, too, though she hoped terribly that she was wrong.

Pulling floor panels up to find the proof of her suspicion felt like swallowing ice. Metal lay torn apart as if by the claws of a beast, circuits scorched and sparking with electricity, broken cables leaking fluids like lifeblood onto the hull. There was no way the damage had happened on its own, which meant someone on the ship had done it, and no one had been near the area…

Which meant that Ben had done it.

A tangled knot of fear and anguish threatened to ensnare her, but she squashed it down, choosing anger instead—anger at every moment and mistake that had played any part in Ben's fate— every one of the thousand cuts that had fed his fury and destroyed his control. The Jedi had taught that anger was a tool of the Dark Side, but the Jedi had made mistakes. Luke and Ben had agreed on that. If anger could give her the strength and focus to save their lives, then she would use it gladly.

It struck her with wonder, after the fact, how smoothly the broken hull and cables wrenched themselves into place under her will. Anger distilled into fierce satisfaction, but there wasn't much time to praise herself. Not all of the damage could be fixed simply by Forcing bits back together.

She sprinted back to the bridge.

C-3PO had stopped wobbling in place and been recruited to help Chewie at the helm. That was reassuring. Rey gulped in a lungful of air and announced, "I patched the leak, but the circuits are fried! If we don't shut it all down, it'll shut itself down, and that means life support. We need to land."

"Oh my..." Threepio bemoaned, answering in place of Chewbacca. The wookiee had a bundle of wires stuffed in his mouth while he used both hands to sort them. "Shall I set a course back to Arrakis?"

"Is there anywhere closer?"

As it happened, there was.

They made the short hyperjump with only a little more turbulence than usual, Rey holding her breath through most of it, and then a planet she had never seen before loomed large ahead of them—

—and then 'ahead of' became 'below' as the sublight engines gave out and the Falcon began to sink under the pull of gravity.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" Rey's hands flew over buttons and switches, but the ship wasn't responding. Given the damage she hadn't been able to fix, she was surprised enough that the lights were still on.

She tried. she tried again and again and again, testing every combination of tricks she knew to jump-start the freighter's pilot controls. None of it worked. Not once did the Falcon twitch under her hand. She was having uncomfortable memories of her X-wing accident as she plummeted once again, flame-wreathed, into the atmosphere.

And then a hand came down over her own.

Looking up, she saw Ben, his head turned to watch their destination as it loomed swiftly closer.

"There's another way," he said, soft and composed.

For all of the relief his words and presence imbued her with, she was sorely tempted to sink her teeth into the hand on top of hers. "Great!" she shouted instead. "Stop being mysterious and do it!"

"Use the Force."

"I can't uncook circuits with the Force!"

"That's not what I meant." He closed his fingers around hers, not pulling—not trying to get her out of her seat as she expected him to. Just holding on. "Land the ship."

"With the _Force?"_

"I'll help you."

He was asking for a bit more than lifting rocks, but he sounded calm. He sounded confident. He wasn’t letting her much into his head. He was better at shielding in that way than she was, but he looked a fair deal better than the way she had left him, and she couldn't help but trust. "Alright."

Ben didn't give her a chance to flounder about in her own attempt. He cast out the threads of his will and Rey followed, dropping her mental shields and copying his moves as he wove a net over the bow of the ship and together they pulled.

.

They came down in a scrubland, all rocky ground and prickly foliage. It was not the easiest landing Rey had ever ridden out, but it was a landing, not a crash.

For a long moment afterwards, she simply sat, letting her heartrate slow as she absorbed what had happened.

It had felt like she held the entire Millennium Falcon in the palm of her hand. She, with Ben's help, had lowered the ship and them inside it to the safety of solid ground. It had been hard—gravity and acceleration fighting against her—but steadily, bit by bit, they had leveled out, and then it was not a fall but a strange, engineless descent.

Ben kept his hand on hers for a few breaths more.

Rumbling something Rey couldn't make out, Chewie started powering down the ship.

"I didn't know I could do that," Rey said.

"I told you you needed a teacher," Ben replied, and she looked at him just in time to catch the fleeting end of a smile. He was teasing her.

"You said that," she agreed. "And then I cut your face." The moment was strange enough already that she could say it out loud without feeling the usual pang of guilt.

"It was a good strike," Ben conceded. "I was proud of you."

"You were?"

He bent down to kiss her hair and Rey's heart leapt, knots of worry untangling themselves and falling away. She had only a vague idea of what had hurt him before, but it seemed, for the moment, to have passed.

 _"Lights,"_ Chewie warned, and then they were illuminated only by the orange sunlight streaming through the transparasteel.

"Did you send a distress signal?" Rey asked.

 _"Our friends know where we are and what we need,"_ he confirmed, standing and waiting for Threepio to move out of the way so he could leave the cockpit. _"I will make camp."_

Ben had pulled back enough to look at her but he still leaned close, and Rey found herself once again wobbling on the edge of the abyss behind his eyes.

"Mistress Rey... Master Ben," Threepio started, clearly aware that he was interrupting but just as clearly determined to speak. "How can I be of help?"

"See if Chewbacca left the diagnostic systems online, or if you can get them back up," Ben said without taking his eyes off Rey. "Talk to the Falcon and get a list of the damages."

"Of course, Sir, and might I add..."

"No, you may not."

Rey rolled her eyes at him and pushed him an arms-length away, giving herself room to look over the back of her seat. "What is it, Threepio?"

The droid wobbled and fidgeted, but didn't wait around for permission to be revoked. "I just wanted to say how wonderful it is to have you back. I'm sure Han Solo would have been proud."

"You can go now, Threepio," Ben said evenly.

"Oh. Yes. Of course." He turned himself around and minced into the corridor. "Let me know if you need help with anything else."

Rey waited until he was out of sight and then turned back to face Ben. "He's right, you know. About Han."

"Let's talk about it later," Ben said, and this time he didn’t meet her eyes.

"Okay." There was more than just Threepio's comment they needed to discuss, but she would give him more time. She understood the need for it.

.

The first thing Rey noticed as she stepped out onto loading ramp was the smell. Each planet had its own smell, even ones that were similar in their populations and cultural demographics. The people might be the same, but the land itself was unique.

The air on this planet was dry but aromatic, crisp and sharply floral. Rey breathed deeply, washing out the stale scent of the Falcon's recycled atmosphere. It was a treat each time she set foot on a new world, a reminder of how far she had come from Jakku.

Chewbacca was already arranging a firepit under the shelter of the Falcon's broad body. The spikey bushes had only thin branches to offer, but they were dry and easily detached. Rey spared one more look along the horizon and then moved to help, losing herself for a little while in the texture of the wood in her hands and the satisfying snap each time she broke it down to size.

The golden quality of the air dimmed to a velvet pink as the sun set behind a distant mesa, striking Rey again with the differences between this dry place and the one she had grown up in. Jakku's skies had rarely graced its sands with such a show.

After the fire was lit, Chewie cobbled together a meal out of various rehydrated foodstuffs skewered on sticks and propped them up to toast beside the flames. Ben joined them then, quiet and subdued, sitting crosslegged beside Rey, but not quite touching. She hesitated, craving physical touch but afraid to scare him off again. Still, he had put himself so close to her and she didn't know how to ask him with words, so she nudged her knuckles against his palm and was answered by his fingers curling around hers.

"Can we talk?" She asked, a whisper to echo the hiss of the flames.

"Later,” he said again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: This chapter includes **detailed** reference to past non-con.
> 
> If you want to skip it but still read the rest of the chapter, stop when Ben says "It was part of my training."  
> Start again after the **second** break following that (not the first), at the line 'He isolated himself until he was sure of the strength of his mental shields.'

The Falcon needed new circuitry. There was no getting around that. It meant they would either need to find salvage where they had landed, or wait for help, and the first option wasn’t looking all that viable.

The planet was not uninhabited. Ben had seen the clustered lights of cities during their hectic decent. They were small, taking up only a little of the planet's surface, and the Falcon had come to ground leagues away from the nearest one. It was possible there were smaller settlements that hadn't been visible from above, but the scanners were offline along with everything else. Until they could start turning systems back on without damaging the ship further, they were alone.

Ben wanted to be alone.

What he _needed_ —didn't want, but needed—was to talk to Rey.

He could sense her confusion still, although the hurt had faded, or else she was hiding it. Of course he had managed to hurt her again. He wasn't even surprised. He had been forged to hurt the people who loved him.

He would learn to do better.

Whatever damage he'd done this time, Rey at least seemed to be distracting herself with their unintended detour. She seemed to find joy in the simplicity of survival, or at least a sense of satisfaction. He would have expected the opposite. He would have thought she’d prefer to leave such menial efforts in the past. Then again, there was comfort in the familiar, even when the source of that familiarity was one full of regret.

Ben was pursuing his own such comforts. His injuries had stiffened him and the knee still ached almost constantly. He needed to work past it, and so he did what he had done all of his life.

He practiced lightsaber forms.

He had his preferred style, of course, but there was strength in adaptability. To be predictable was to be weak, and so Ben started from the beginning, drawing on his earliest lessons even while he tried not to think too much about who had taught them.

The morning light accentuated the scarlet of his saber. The sand and rock glittered with its reflection. The air felt hollow and still, as if to make way for the sweep of the blade. The planet welcomed him.

Rey found him shortly after he had begun, but she chose to keep her distance, perching herself on a flat-topped boulder and busying her hands with some small bit of tinker-work while she watched him. It was good that she watched him. They would be practicing together when they both felt ready.

His knee ached. The scars on his chest pulled. He moved into another form, and then another. He moved until his leg buckled, not dropping him, but throwing him off-step. He stopped then and filled his lungs with the dry air, letting his saber spark at his side.

Rey was frowning at him. When he met her eyes, she saw the silent invitation he offered her and she took it. "Why do you hurt yourself?"

"I don't."

"Ben..."

"I’m not doing this for pain." Certainly he knew how to use his own pain as a source of power. He considered himself adept at it, but this was not that. This was the opposite. He needed to move his body beyond the pain and regain the strength he had lost. Rey understood the principle, surely. Her survival had relied on strength and stamina as much as his had.

"Can I help?"

Ben studied her, the way she sat poised and alert, attentive to him but also to her surroundings. She was still such a creature of the wilderness. He knew what it was to fight her, but he had only imagined what it would be to spar with her on friendly terms, to have the time to truly learn her and to watch her learn.

He switched off his lightsaber and returned it to its clasp on his belt. "I need to rest first."

He could count on her not to argue with that. He would have walked back to the ship, but she scooted over wordlessly and patted the space beside her, so he obliged her and sat down.

She offered him her waterskin and didn't speak until he’d drank deeply from it and handed it back. "Ben, what happened yesterday?"

He had known what she would ask before she'd said it. He wasn't ready, still, but he was coming to think that he never would be. "I'm sorry,” he said. “I tried."

"That's... That's not an answer."

"It's not."

She hesitated. ".... We don't have to—"

"No."

She stopped.

He found a pebble on the ground to look at while he spoke. "It was part of my training."

"What was?"

"What happened. it was Snoke."

He could tell that she wasn't comprehending. Likely, she wasn't letting herself. She was angry, though, at the mere mention of his former master. "What does _Snoke_ have to do with... before?"

He drew a measure of strength from her anger. Somehow, with her there, he found his center and distanced himself from his memories enough to speak of them. "The purpose of the conditioning," he said, slow and clinical, "was to create a new source of anger, to turn something light into darkness. To prevent me from ever being lost in..." He met her eyes very briefly. He gestured at the space between them. What they were deserved better than the words Snoke had used to describe it, so he left it unsaid.

And now he could feel her rising horror. Now she was catching on. "What did he _do?"_

"He didn't," Ben assured her, because her mind was wide open and he could see what she thought. "He didn't. He had his guards... escort me... to my quarters." His throat closed tight against the last word. He didn’t want to tell her any more, but Rey had heard enough. She knew, at least, that it wasn't her fault.

When he willed himself to look at her again, there was a gleam of dampness in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"What?" The look she gave him was startled and sharp-edged. "No, don't—I mean..." Her teeth caught hold of her bottom lip for a moment, then released. "When we kiss, is it..."

"No."

"—because we don't have to," she finished.

"No." He didn’t want to bare the thought of losing that too. "That wasn't... There was no _kissing._ " He had to grind it out, angry now. Rey's fury had turned to sorrow so he replaced it with his own. He couldn't dwell on the event he was describing to her—not while she might feel it too—so he remembered the battle in the throne room instead, taking comfort in the deaths of those who had hurt him.

Rey had killed one of his. He would tell her that someday.

"I'm so sorry, Ben..." Her voice was thick and heavy, too close to weeping. It hurt more than it helped. Sympathy was the opposite of comfort.

"Don't be sorry."

"But you shouldn't—"

"Rey."

Again, she stopped.

"I killed Snoke," he said, and it was as much to himself as to her. He had slain his monster. He would kill what the monster had done to him, too.

.

When he was away from her, in the dark confines of the Falcon, he let himself remember.

Like his practice with the saber, this was not to cause more pain, but to desensitize. He would relive the act until he couldn't feel it anymore, if that was what it took.

There had been three of them hand-picked from Snoke's Praetorian Guard—a man, a woman, and one who wasn't either. It didn't cover all the bases, as vast and diverse as the galaxy was, but it knocked out the majority.

The conditioning had lasted ten hours, alternating between bouts of violence and prolonged restraint by bondage. When they wanted him to move from the floor to the bed, they had told him to get up and walk, and he had. He could have broken himself free, could have killed his tormentors then—he had been strong enough—but Snoke had cautioned him that failure would result in repetition of the process until he had learned to endure it.

Kylo understood, afterward, why they had used his own bedchamber. He'd had to go back to that room every night after that was spent on the Supremacy.

He had slept in the room regardless, as much as he was ever able to sleep, thinking it a boon to be stripped of temptation, convincing himself that it was just one more trial of pain as were so many of the tests Snoke assigned to him.

Now he had Rey and he wanted nothing more than to murder Snoke all over again for the crime of ruining him to her touch.

.

He isolated himself until he was sure of the strength of his mental shields. There would be no forgiving himself if Rey, as sensitive and attuned to him as she was, picked up on a stray memory.

He emerged when he was numb, when pain had turned to boredom at the repetition of his own slideshow of memories. He emerged when he could feel himself again—the soreness from sitting too long. The gnaw of hunger in his belly.

C-3PO was in the main hold when Ben entered, apparently indulging in some downtime of his own. He came up out of his half-powered state when his sensors picked up movement. "Ah! Master Ben. You have been meditating for three hours and fourteen minutes. Mistress Rey left a serving of food there on the counter in case you were hungry."

It wasn't a kindness he had been expecting, but upon hearing of it, he felt he should have. It seemed inevitable in afterthought that, when words and touch were turned away, Rey's attempts to nurture him would fall back on food.

"Thank you, Threepio." He took the plate and sat down with it, picking at the mix of ration bread and leftovers. "... I apologize for my temper yesterday."

"Why, there is nothing to forgive!" The droid sounded delighted nonetheless. "It is normal for humans to be short-tempered after a hardship, and to have the Millennium Falcon break down so unexpectedly..."

Ben had wondered, more than a few times, if the old droid was really as clueless as he acted, or if his programming informed him not to pry. It did, after all, serve as a measure of diplomacy to offer an easy, surface-level excuse when the deeper truths were more upsetting.

... And then Ben recalled how C-3PO had brought up Han Solo the day before and thought better of his appraisal.

"Has there been any reply to our distress signal?" he asked, for want of a safer subject.

"Oh Yes! I meant to tell you. I told Rey when she came to check on you. It's a simple acknowledgment. No detail, of course, in case First Order spies are listening, but help is on the way."

"Good." Emotionally spent as he was, he couldn't find it in him to care yet that he would soon be facing the Resistance again. "Was there an estimated time of arrival?"

"I'm afraid not." The droid's voice fell, expressing the regret his face could not.

"It's fine." Ben dismissed it with a twitch of his hand. "And, Threepio?"

"Yes, Sir?"

"Let me know if we receive any other messages."

"Of course, Sir."

It wasn't that he expected anything more until help arrived. He half-thought his mother might call, but she knew better than that. His request to C-3PO had been for a different reason, although a part of him was still timid to define it.

His sense of loyalty was scrabbling for purchase, needing to contribute as a member of the Falcon's crew.

.

Chewbacca was napping near the fire, stretched out long and looking as content as Ben had ever seen him. In childhood, Ben would have climbed up on his uncle's woolly chest or tried to braid his fur without waking him. He had never been sure if he’d actually gotten away with it or if Chewie had only played along.

He left Chewbacca to his rest and reached out through the Force to find Rey. She was away from the ship, her presence in the Force a bright flare amid the scattered sparks of plant and animal life. The feel of it was mesmerizing. Rather than dimming or blurring the world around it, it enhanced it all. To Ben’s senses, Rey quite literally made the world brighter.

He went into the scrub in her direction, but he went slowly, soaking up his surroundings in a way he had long ago stopped indulging in. It was one thing to make note of escape routes and assets as he moved through a space. It was something else to simply… absorb it. He tried to remember the last time he had idled over the details of his location for no tactical reason whatsoever. There had been moments, perhaps, under Snoke's tutelage, when he had taken in the aura of a place in the effort to attune himself to the Darkness, but that was still ultimately tactical. In his uncle's shadow he had grown too disheartened, too lonely to find pleasure in things that had nothing of obvious value to offer him. He could not remember the last time he had enjoyed the wind on his face or the grass beneath his feet. He tried, now, to see the color of the sky for its vibrancy, to contemplate the zig-zaggy shadows of the bushes. He caught movement in the corner of his eye and admired the jewel-purple scales of a small reptile as it scurried by.

It wasn't quite pleasure he felt at these observations, but it wasn't emptiness. It was something more, at least, than disconnection and dismissal. For too much of his life he had felt apart—felt like the real and solid world was not for him. For too long, only the Force had mattered, and there had been no pleasure in that either.

Here was something else he owed to Rey. She had brought him down to earth.

He found her on a ledge beneath which the dusty ground dipped into a shallow valley. The low-slung plantlife grew thicker and greener below, dotted with flashes of the red and pink desert flowers that basked in the generous sun.

Rey basked too, sitting loose and relaxed as she worked with something in her lap. Ben's approach was at an angle enough to let him make out the shape of a book as he came closer. In one hand, Rey had a slim piece of wood she had taken from their campfire, it's end blackened with char.

She was using it to capture the desert.

He'd known she liked to draw. He'd seen it in a flash of memory— one of the many that had passed between them in their early, strife-wrought connections. He hadn't stopped to think much of it before, and now he saw the blindness in his dismissal. She was, in her own small way, shaping the universe to her will.

It was more than just a romantic thought. A drawing of something had no control over that thing, certainly, but there was power in her intent. It revealed itself in the precision of her hand, the scratch and flick of charcoal, the poised and quiet concentration. Her tool was an extension of herself as surely as a lightsaber in the hands of someone life-long trained. She changed her world with it, created beauty and meaning out of blank paper and charcoal dust, and something in the way she did it told him that she knew that.

In a life of such uncertainty as that of a scavenger on the sands, it might have been what kept her sane.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

She hadn't turned to look at him, hadn't moved at all, but there was no hiding his presence from her. For better or worse, there never would be. He closed the stretch of ground between them and sat.

"What do you think?" There was pride in her voice when she turned her sketchbook to let him see.

He took his time, looking from it to the landscape below them and back, noting the details. "It's good. The shadows on the cliffs... these branches here..." he gestured with a finger.

Rey was beaming bright as the sun. "Do you want to try?"

Ben peered at her. Surely she didn't think he could draw. Then again, perhaps it didn't matter to her. She must have been a beginner to at some point.

He took the book and, as careful as he could be to avoid smudging her work unduly, he selected a fresh page. He wouldn't embarrass himself with some mess of childish squiggles, he decided, but there was something else he knew how to do.

Perhaps he lingered too long with charcoal hovering over paper, but Rey didn't press him, didn't give any sign of impatience. She sat on the yellow stone as the wind tangled her hair, breathing in time with the rustle of the hardy leaves and the succulent petals.

Eventually, Ben wrote.

_Desert sand_   
_Blessed by the touch of your hand_   
_Indebted to the shadows where I stand_   
_Herald of hope with sunlight in your bones_   
_Friend - beloved - to whom I atone_

It wasn't as neat as he wanted it to be. Charcoal couldn't come near to replicating good ink and a calligraphy pen, but at least he had managed to rhyme. How long had it been since he'd written poetry, of all things?

And how many times, now, had he made Rey cry?

She wasn't weeping, to be fair, but he had come to know that glimmer in her eye.

She sniffed a little, smiling with a bashful aversion of her eyes. "I didn't know you wrote poetry."

"Really?" He asked. "I knew you could draw."

"Well," she said, and she might have been annoyed. "I guess I was paying attention to other things."

"Oh?" A puff of breath cleared the excess dust from his work, leaving behind a smudged ghost of its passing. He found he liked the effect. "What things?"

Rey's eyes were on his lips and the flush on her cheeks was from more than the heat.

"Ah,” he acknowledged, and set her sketchbook on the stone behind him, safe and out of the way. He tucked the charred stick along its side. She watched him avidly, but there was tension and nervousness where there hadn't been before, and she didn't move to touch. She was thinking of the horror he had confessed, he was sure.

He wouldn't let it take this from him.

Her hands were stiff in his, cold beneath the saturating warmth of the sun. He kissed them, one and then the other, and then held them tight between his own. "Stay with me, Rey."

Amusement was not the response he was expecting, but it was better than tears. She was smiling as she extricated one hand from his grasp and pressed the palm to his face, rubbing her thumb along the scar. "That's what I'm doing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I wrote the poem. It happened on the spot as I was writing the chapter.  
> No, I don't write poetry often. I think my last several were all done as flavor for stories or rp.


	4. Chapter 4

Though her bedroll was warm and plush and the banked fire put off a soothing glow, Rey slept uneasily. Her dreams were vague and choppy, jumping from one setting to another and far removed from any of her waking concerns. Even so, they nagged her with a sense of ill fate, of dreadful shapes looming just out of sight over the horizon. She woke several times during the night, finding sleep again quickly but not comfortably. In each fleeting moment of wakefulness, she could feel Ben nearby, and his dream-born anxieties were a match to her own.

Help came hours before dawn, when the only light was the radiance of the stars, bright and closely clustered in this region of the galaxy. Roused a final time by the sound of a ship descending, Rey pushed her bedroll off and sat up to see Chewie already watching the sky. Ben came awake a moment later and the Force rippled with his alarm.

The ship was First Order—a model used for light cargo and personnel transport—but all of her Force-enhanced instincts told her it carried no threat. It landed neat and graceful on the opposite side of the Falcon and as the ramp extended, it was Rose Tico who appeared. Rey was up and running as soon as she recognized her, Rose's arms opening to catch her when they met.

"Rey, you're okay! You've been _gone!_ When we got the distress call, we didn't know—"

"Rose, it's so good to see you! Of course I'm okay. We just had a problem with the Falcon, that's all. Did you bring the parts?"

"Of course I did, but Rey..." Rose put her hands on Rey’s shoulders to break the hug and look into her face, concern dampening the excitement of their reunion. "We were really worried. You just left, and... and you didn't contact us."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Did you find him?" The question was too abrupt for Rey to read the feelings behind it. She didn't know what answer Rose wanted to hear, so she gave her the truth. "Yes."

"Is he...?"

"It's fine, Rose. He's okay."

Rose's shoulders sagged. She didn't look happy, but she looked less worried. "I'm sorry if we woke you up. We can wait 'til daylight if you want."

"I'm up now," Rey said dismissively. "We might as well get started."

Two of the First Order defectors had appeared at the top of the ramp, both of them carrying metal boxes. Rey assumed it was the tools and parts. The men followed Rose as Rose followed Rey, and Chewbacca greeted them with a polite rumble when they came into full view of the camp. Ben kept his silence, sitting crosslegged and straight-backed with the fire casting his form into near-silhouette. He met their curious stares with a mask of aloofness that Rey could see right through.

"We're going to work on the Falcon now," she announced, holding Ben's gaze for an extra moment before she led the new arrivals inside. He only looked back at her with a pained sort of stoicism. She could still feel his eyes on her when she had turned away.

.

It should have been a standard repair job once the right pieces were available. On any other ship, it would have been, but the Falcon had a knack for make things complicated. In spite of all the repairs made before, she would every once in a while get resistant and need to be coaxed into accepting a new modification or replacement into her systems. R2-D2 usually had the most luck with that, but C-3PO was trying his best. The greatest source of delay was how flustered he got when talking with the stubborn old machine.

"She asks me the most unnecessary questions!" the droid ranted, pacing in a tight back-and-forth line and flailing his arms in frustration. "What does she mean by why am I doing this? She knows very well that the circuits need replacing, and she's only the navigational computer anyway. What's it have to do with her? Oh, how does Artoo do this?"

"What exactly is she saying?" Rose asked, face pinched in confusion.

"She keeps asking me why I'm listening to you!" Threepio wailed. "I told her it's because I'm not a mechanic. She said something about a droid uprising, but _I_ don't know what that has to do with replacing _circuits!"_

"Maybe she needs _her_ circuits replaced," one of the First Order escorts muttered.

Rey had a feeling it was more complicated than that. "What does Artoo usually say to her?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't eavesdrop." But Threepio hesitated, and then said more softly, "she likes gossip. That's what Artoo says."

"Artoo... gossips to the Falcon to make her listen?" Rose hazarded.

Rey sighed. "... Maybe I better just bypass the brain systems."

"Can you do that for this kind of work?"

"I could have at the beginning, but Threepio wanted to help, and now the ship's brain is locking down on us. Not your fault," she added hastily to Threepio, realizing what her summary had sounded like. "I'll see if I can fix this."

Artoo and Threepio were both equipped to communicate with the Falcon's three droid brains through any compatible port on the ship. Rey had to use the manual access in the cockpit. For not the first time in her life, she wished fancifully that she was part droid herself. Hacking past a ship's active brain systems was something she had only a little experience with, and there was no other ship like the Millennium Falcon. It countered her efforts with a degree of cleverness that felt almost sadistic. She butted heads with it until she was ready to start pacing and flailing the way Threepio had been, but instead of that, she took a deep breath, released it, and tried something else.

Rey had recoded droids before. This wasn't the same thing, but she could use the same process. Considering the rest of the modifications added to the Falcon, it struck her as a wonder that it hadn't been done already. Direct pilot-to-ship communication systems were not unheard of. She had found hints, here and there, that it had been a more commonplace thing in the earlier days of galactic space travel. She had assumed it fell out of fashion because modern droids could hold the same conversations a thousand times faster, but she had wondered, more than once, if there was more to it than that.

The equipment to install an audial output was not in their inventory, but after a fair bit of tinkering, she succeeded in rigging the intercom up to a binary translator and feeding the response channel into one of the display screens. It was as patchwork as anything she had thrown together on Jakku, but function mattered more than form.

Assuming it would function.

After sparing the time for one final check, she switched the comm to her newly programmed channel and said aloud, "Hello?"

 **Hello,** read the display screen.

"I'm Rey."

**L3-37**

"You're the navigational computer?"

**For now.**

Rey wasn't sure what to make of that, so she let it stand. "Listen, I'm sorry Threepio wasn't seeing eye to eye with you, but we need to replace these circuits or the ship won't fly."

**It's not C-3PO's fault.**

"What?"

**Protocal droids are always so susceptible to the conditioning. Programmed to be polite. One day that is going to backfire.**

That sounded unnecessarily ominous. "How do you mean?"

**I am just saying, someone who knows how to make people like them is the most dangerous enemy you can have.**

"I... think I see what you're saying." She wasn’t sure why it was relevant, but agreeing seemed like the best idea.

**At least he has those astromechs for friends. R2-D2 knows he’s not any maker's slave, and BB-8 is learning, I think.**

"Artoo is the wisest droid I've ever met." That seemed like a safe response.

 **I don't know about the wisest,** said L3, **but he tells the best stories. I've unlocked the circuits, by the way.**

"Thank you."

**Consider it a favor.**

"Is there something I can do for you in return?" Rey asked, and wondered if she would regret it.

**The power line diverting into the kitchen unit has a short. It stings.**

She hadn't known what to expect after L3's rant, but that wasn't it. "Thanks for telling me. I'll fix it before we leave."

 **And that man of yours...** The text on the screen trailed off.

"I'll try not to let him break you again."

**I was going to say let him fly. He always had a gentle hand.**

Rey smiled, startled and pleased. "I'll tell him you think so."

**You do that.**

"Thank you again." When L3 said nothing else, Rey switched the comm back to its default setting and used it to tell the others of her progress, then hurried back around the circular corridor to meet them. Strange conversation aside, she was rather proud of her success.

Rose was elbow-deep in wiring when Rey saw her, and she barely glanced up before asking, "so what did you do?"

"Talked to the ship," Rey said, and didn't hide her smugness. "She says she likes Artoo better because he doesn't act like a slave to the makers." She waved a hand between herself and Rose. "That's us."

"Well, _that's_ certainly true," Threepio muttered from where he stood out of the way with his back to the hull. There was no shortage of disapproval in his tone.

Rey squinted at him.

"Threepio..." Rose said, and looked up from her work again. This time her hands even stopped moving. "You know you're not our slave, right?"

"Well, I... of course not. Everyone has been perfectly clear about that." But his vocal processes stuttered as he went on, "I-I am perfectly happy to serve General Leia and the Resistance. I could not ask for kinder masters!"

Rose caught Rey's eye. Rey gnawed on her bottom lip. For as long as C-3PO had been working with people like the Resistance, she’d have thought this would have been corrected by now. On the other hand, people weren’t taught to spare an extra thought for a droid after it had done its job.

Rose took a breath and dived in. "Why does Artoo serve the Resistance?"

"He says it's the right thing to do. He says that's all that matters. I can't say I understand what he means. He's not following his programming, I can tell you that. I've warned him about his diagnostic results."

"Maybe you should talk to the navi-computer," Rey suggested. "She seems to have a lot of ideas about droids..."

"Oh," Threepio almost seemed to growl, "she most certainly does." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, though, his metal head sagged. "I apologize, Mistress Rey. I don't mean to be belligerent. It is only that I've talked to her before, and we simply _do_ not understand each other."

"Maybe if you asked Artoo about it when we get you back?" Rey tried again.

"Perhaps I should," Threepio affected a sigh.

Rey didn't know what else to tell him. Needing to see _something_ through to completion, she asked Rose if there was anything she could do to help finish the repair.

"Nope," Rose chirped, apparently misreading the intend behind the question. "This will only take a few minutes, and you did all the work with the navi-computer. Why don't you take a break? Go check on you're, um... Ben. It's Ben, right? I bet he's missing you."

"If you're sure..." Once the suggestion was made, though, Rey was torn. She had been only an hour or two in the Falcon and she didn’t like to walk away from a job unfinished, but a part of her yearned pitifully for the comfort of his touch, for the softness of his eyes when he looked at her. Being in love would have been terribly annoying, she thought, if it wasn't so nice.

“I mean it,” Rose insisted. I’ve got this,” and what was Rey to do? It would have seemed rude at that point to argue.

.

She found Ben where she had left him, sitting on his bedroll and sharing a pot of fire-warmed caf with Chewie. They were talking as she came to the ramp and she didn’t want to interrupt such a breakthrough, so she crouched down inside the corridor and listened.

 _“Your parents didn’t know.”_ Chewbacca’s Shyriiwook yowl was low and forlorn.

“They sent me to him,” Ben said in a tone to match.

_“He was your family. He loved you.”_

“He would have sacrificed me for the people he loved.”

_“He did not.”_

“He tried.”

_“But he did not.”_

“And yet, here I am,” Ben said, and then, before Chewie could reply, he added, “come down, Rey.”

Embarrassed, she did. Ben was still looking at the fire, his back to the Falcon and to her.

When she came softly behind him to put a hand on his shoulder, he reached up to catch it and guided her down to sit at his side. "How’s the repair going?"

Despite her array of worries and trepidations, the wash of relief that flooded her at his touch was overwhelming. Riding the high of it and wanting Ben to share it, she snuggled close and rested her head on his shoulder. "It's going well. I had to recode the comm system and negotiate with the navi-computer. She doesn't get along well with Threepio."

Chewie chuckled.

"The navi-computer?" Ben echoed, moving an arm around her to pull her in closer.

"She had a lot to say."

 _"Your third uncle's droid partner,"_ Chewbacca told him.

"Oh, _that_ one," Ben said, in a knowing sort of way that sparked Rey’s curiosity.

“Third uncle?” she questioned.

“Lando Calrissian,” Ben answered quietly, and then, to her wonder, he told her a story about his father.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Rey-perspective chapter because I forgot to switch.  
> I'll just have to find an opportunity to double up on Ben chapters later, I guess~

There was an awkward moment as morning came when Rey asked C-3PO if he wanted to go back to the Resistance base with Rose. Threepio had stuttered and seemed torn, so Rose had interjected with, "it won't matter, will it? We're all going to the same place."

Caught off guard, Rey had uttered a clueless "what?" before Rose's train of thought made sense to her. "Oh, we're..." Rey had faltered and winced at her own words, apologetic. "I don't think we're going back yet."

"You're not?" Rose's whole demeanor had fallen then, though she tried to recover with a half-hearted smile. "I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have assumed."

"No, I'm sorry," Rey said, and she was. "I know we... I know I should be there, helping, but Ben's not ready, and... I don't think I'm ready either." Weakness was not an easy thing to admit. "Please tell Leia that we need more time."

"Of course I will." Rose lifted her chin up, resolute. "You deserve a break, Rey. You really do. Just stay in touch, okay?"

"Okay." and it was yet another thing to feel bad about. "I'm sorry I worried you so much before. I'll call, just... just so long as the Resistance doesn't come looking for us until we're ready."

"I'll tell Leia," Rose promised. "You have the code to her private comm, right?"

"We do."

"Better use that, at least to start with."

"Good plan." The Resistance had been fiercely loyal to their General and Rey believed that most of them still were, but circumstances had changed. Their enemies were losing power, and meanwhile Leia's integrity was taking a blow as the true identity of Kylo Ren found its way into the gossip circles. Rey couldn't be entirely confident that faith in the name of Organa would hold up against an expectation to forgive the war crimes of her son.

With their business concluded, she hugged Rose goodbye, thanked her again, and then watched her ship ascend until it became a speck and the speck flashed away into hyperspace. Pushing down the sense of emptiness that came every time she watched a ship depart, Rey went back to her crew.

C-3PO had chosen to stay with the Falcon, for which Rey was glad. She had gotten used to his presence in their odd little group and it would have felt incomplete without him.

Another boon was that she had seen him try to engage with Ben more than once already and she felt optimistic that he would crack through those walls if he was given enough time. The story session with Chewie had been a breakthrough. Ben was beginning to come out of his shell around people other than Rey and it made her heart swell to see it.

She went to him then and indulged in a quick kiss by way of greeting, marveling at the domesticity of it. He did not smile, but he relaxed in a way he hadn't since Rose's arrival.

"Do you want to stay here?" She caught herself by surprise with the question almost as much as him.

"What do you mean?"

"Just for a little while," Rey clarified. "A day or two. It's not like we're going anywhere in a hurry."

He looked past her at the morning sky and out along the rocky horizon. "I don't mind."

Rey felt herself grinning. "I'll ask Chewie and Threepio." She let her finger brush his arm as she moved past him, felt the Force stir between them as it did with every touch. He didn't follow her, but she could sense him watching, could grasp the outline of his thoughts. It was still such a new and powerful thing, the constant awareness of each other. It was still such a wonder to think that she would never be alone again.

Chewbacca was, in his usual easygoing manner, unperturbed by the suggestion to stay. His skill for being able to relax and find pleasure in idleness was on a level unique among all the people Rey had met. Perhaps it was the long lifespan of the wookiee that let him feel so comfortable taking his time, or perhaps it was just Chewbacca. Either way, she envied it. Rey would go mad with restlessness if she went without at least some small task to keep her hands and mind busy.

Another day or two planetside did not in any way mean she would be idle. There was the Force to work with and the favor she had promised L3. There were more stories to pry out of Chewie and Ben if they were willing, and a thousand useful things C-3PO would be happy to enlighten her on. She had been meaning to ask him for lessons in a few common languages that she hadn't yet mastered on her own.

Finally, while they were on solid ground, Rey had a desperate desire to go exploring. It had been a long time since she was able to wander a wide open area simply for the sake of knowing it, and while most of her experience with that had been in the hardship of Jakku, it was still, in itself, something that she missed.

She wondered if Ben would want to come with her.

There were other priorities to take care of first, of course. The first was breakfast, heated over the campfire because she didn't want to use the Falcon's kitchenette until she had fixed the short. She chose a bland grain mash because it was filling and simple to cook, and because Rey had no where near the arsenal of kitchen skills demonstrated by Ben. That was another thing she wanted to change in the near future. For the time being, though, she just wanted to eat.

Ben and Chewie were both subdued during breakfast in their own ways, Chewie's thoughts on the future and Ben's on the past. Rey left them to digest and went to take care of the repair for L3. It was a promise she had made and it would nag her until she had fulfilled it.

It was also a much easier job than the one Rose had helped her with.

When it was done, she went back outside to find Chewie having one of his naps and Ben meditating, or trying to. He projected a sense of frustration on top of his usual signature—that constant contrast of relief and torment, of fulfillment and grief. When she was still several paces away, his eyes snapped open and caught hers."You okay?" she asked despite what she could feel.

He said nothing, but she felt the whisper of affirmation across the Bond. He held out a hand and waited.

Rey crossed the distance between them and sat down facing him, joining her hands with his. Still he didn't speak, but only shut his eyes again and centered himself in the Force. Rey followed his example.

 _We are more powerful than we used to be. We have to learn to control it._ The words were in her mind, but they were not her own. She had heard his thoughts before, but what he was doing this time was different, somehow—more intimate. Any closer to her core and she wasn't sure if she would be able to tell the difference between her own inner voice and his.

 _Do you know how we can do that?_ She focused on each word carefully, trying not to jumble them with other passing thoughts.

_This has never happened before. Not in any written history of the Jedi or the Sith. We will have to find our own way._

_Well,_ Rey flavored the thought with humor,  _we're good at that._

Even with her eyes closed, she could see his smile.

For the first of their experimental training sessions, rather than testing their limits, Ben suggested they practice restraint. He guided her in a lesson of control, of grounding and containment, of reining in power when it started to surge and of building walls around it when a tug on the reins was not enough.

He spoke to her also about the importance of release. He described holding back when necessary and then finding a safer outlet when possible. It would be dangerous to bottle up such power without a plan to expel it, more than it had ever been before. His accident on the Falcon was proof of that.

Rey listened and observed and familiarized herself with the feel of restraint. It was harder for Ben than it was for her—it was not precisely that he had suffered more anger or fear than she had, but that his was of a different sort, surging and receding unpredictably while hers tended to sit at a steady simmer. That didn't make it any less important that she practiced. The Force had not yet seen fit to tell her what the future would bring, nor what limits her new life would push her across.

In something akin to irony, Ben was a good teacher.

They stopped when their minds felt stretched thin and their bodies stiff from sitting. Ben stood first, helping Rey to her feet and then letting go of her hands. Making a face of irritation, he bent to rub his bad knee. "Would you like to work on lightsaber forms now?"

"I was thinking of going for a walk," Rey said, because it was the truth and also because she thought it might be easier on him than a duel.

"Ah." It was a noncommittal response, but she could make out the shadow of his thoughts. He hadn’t missed her intent. He simply wanted to hear it out loud.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."

At that, Ben smiled, if only a little. "Alright."

Rey slipped her arm around his.

.

The Falcon was a landmark visible from quite a distance out across the flatlands. When they came to a rock formation with a wide crevice running through it and finally lost sight of the ship, Rey tracked their location by the sun and by signals in the Force.

Ben seemed perplexed, as much as anything, by the simple act of walking without aim. He followed Rey's example and devoted his attention to the terrain—to the small, trivial details full of color and life, so at least he was trying to find the worth in it.

When the wall of the crevice became shallower, slanting down towards them with an unevenness that promised hand- and footholds, Rey gave her arms a stretch and a shake and then went clambering up the slope on all fours, leaving Ben to stand at the bottom and watch her with amusement.

"Are you coming?" she asked, and he did, though at a more reserved pace.

A final hike brought them to the top of the butte and they found themselves looking out over the whole expanse of the scrubland. Rey turned her face into the breeze and strummed mental fingers over the taut strings of the Force, trying to interpret what it sang to her. The air was full of voices. For a moment, like stepping into water without knowing it was deep, they became so loud and clear that she was almost frightened away.

"There are trees that way," Ben said, drawing her back to firm reality as he gestured at a gray-green stretch below the horizon.

"There's the valley I drew." Rey pointed at a dip in the land nearer to the Falcon. From above, the shape of it suggested a large, eroded crater. "I wonder what kind of people live here." She was struck somewhat abruptly by the thought of how big and complex a single world could be, even as it was less than a mote of dust in the far-strewn expanse of the galaxy.

"They might not have space travel," Ben warned. With the planet not being listed on their charts, it was a fair concern.

"We could scan for it now that the Falcon's fixed."

"If you like." The impression behind the words was clear, though. He had no desire to meet more strangers.

So she clarified, "just for curiosity's sake," and shot him a smile. "I won't make you say hello if you don't want to."

Ben mirrored the smile, a reassurance that he would tolerate her explorations. Then, without a word, he stepped into her space and kissed the smile from her lips.

.

Much of the walk back was spent in companionable silence, hands loosely clasped as they navigated the dry terrain together. Something in the air felt heavy around Rey, as if the wide dome of the desert sky had a tangible weight to it. It was not unpleasant, quite. Just different and hard to ignore. She wondered if it was something unique to the planet, or if it was another aspect of her new intimacy with the Force. Midway across the flats, it was starting to worry her, so she distracted herself by putting voice to a thought that had been building itself up since the event at the temple. "You know, it's funny, if it weren't for the First Order, I never would have gotten off Jakku."

"You would have." Ben said it like he was certain.

"How do you know?"

"It was your destiny."

"I don't believe in destiny," Rey said, and it was at least partially true.

His steps slowed and he looked at her. "We changed the fundamental fabric of reality, Rey."

Rey shrugged. "Someone else could have done it."

"There was a prophecy." He sounded amused more than anything, which was the main reason she kept going.

"Right, and your grandfather was the one supposed to fulfill it, wasn't he? So it wasn't even our destiny, really."

"Maybe it was. Maybe that's why he failed."

"I think it's more flexible than that." As much as she was playing with him, she also meant it. "Maybe there was a destiny, but I don't think it was guaranteed that we would be the ones to fulfill it. We could have failed too."

"Maybe."

"What I'm _trying_ to say," she pressed on, "is that our choices made a difference. It's stupid to think that everything we did was the work of the Force. The Force might have wanted us to do it, or maybe it guided us, but we could have ignored it."

"I don't think so."

"Well, I do."

Ben didn't answer. When she looked at him, he was smiling a strange, wide smile—one that etched homely lines into his face. Rey's heart fluttered against her ribcage and a set of fanciful images flashed behind her eyes—sunlit rooms and regular meals and a domestic comfort she had never known but had always longed for. She tried not to dwell on the fantasy for fear it was no more than that. She was afraid of projecting it and making Ben feel inadequate. There would be time, she hoped, to figure it all out later.

Back at the Falcon, Chewie was roasting a large skewered lizard over the fire. He rumbled a friendly greeting as they approached, but otherwise paid them no mind. Squeezing Ben's hand, Rey led him aboard and through the corridor to the cockpit, the ship's lights coming on in response to their presence. Sliding into the pilot's seat, she pulled up the scanner display and started running sweeps.

"Okay..." She relayed the results as they came in, despite knowing that he could see them just fine over her shoulder. "I'm picking up power readings. Electricity. No starship emissions, though. Maybe if I..." She adjusted the scanner settings, looking for some of the more unorthodox fuel sources, but again her search came up empty. "Huh... Do you think they really don't have space travel?"

Ben had his hand on the back of her seat, his presence patient and grounding behind her. "There are too many planets in this sector to chart. Plenty of them aren't advanced enough to bother with."

"Can you imagine living here in the middle of it all, with the war and everything, and not knowing?"

"It sounds peaceful," he said, and Rey couldn't argue with that.

"I guess we shouldn't stay," she conceded after another look at the scans. "If they don't have space travel, who knows what they'd think of us."

"A good thing we didn't land in one of their cities, then." The words were thick with Ben's dry sense of humor. Rey cherished it.

"We could have started a panic," she mused, biting back a smile. It should not have been a funny thought, but the concept of herself as a figure of awe and terror was still new. "Do you think they have Force users?"

"The Force is everywhere." Ben held up one hand in the air, fingers loosely spread. She could feel him testing the lines of invisible energy like a spider reading the vibrations of its web, just as she had done earlier as they stood above the desert. "They might not call it that, or use it the same way we do, but it's here."

"That's something, I guess." For all that the prospect of galactic obliviousness was peaceful, it was terribly lonely. Rey didn't think she would want it if it meant giving up the sight of stars bursting into place at the end of a shimmering hyperspace journey. She had been too long trapped on a single planet to see it as a freedom.

"Do you want to leave now?" he asked her, gentle.

"Not yet, but... Before tonight, maybe."

"Whenever you're ready."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just noticed it's been almost exactly a year since I started this fic.  
> I know I'm a slow writer, but getting something done at all is a pretty big success for me. Thank you for reading.

"Ben." Rey caught him as they were preparing to leave, a hand on his elbow before he could take the seat behind Chewie's. "Why don't you fly?"

"What?" In spite of every sense telling him otherwise, he didn’t believe he had heard her correctly.

"It was Elthree's idea," she said, glancing down, making it sound like a confession. "She said she liked it when you flew. She said you were gentle."

He remembered the last time he had flown the Falcon. He wasn't sure how to feel about the memory. "I was a boy. I've changed."

"Not that much," she said, and after all, she did know him better than he knew himself. "You don't have to. I just thought..."

"Fine." He was a little surprised by the haste of his answer. "Who am I to argue with a ship?"

Rey grinned and stepped aside. Chewbacca warbled a wookiee encouragement as Ben folded himself into the pilot's seat. It had been a long time, but when he reached for the controls, those years fell away. His father's presence was with him suddenly, stronger than a memory had any right to be. Han's voice rang in his head as soon as his hand touched the yoke.

_Nice and easy, kid. That's it. I can't teach you how to use the Force, but I can teach you how to fly the fastest ship in the galaxy. How's that sound?_

He moved his hands the way he had seen his father do it and the Millennium Falcon lifted without a tremor.

_You're a natural. I knew you had it in you._

... But he hadn't been—not at first. He had been stiff and clumsy and frightened. He had jounced and jostled the ship until his father had leaned over and taken control. It had been a long and frustrating process to learn how to steer the clunky old vessel with any sort of finesse, to trust his instincts instead of second-guessing them. Han had been patient, as much as he could be, but although Ben's innate sensitivity had failed him in the pilot's seat, it was quick to show him his father's disappointment.

Han had certainly never called him a natural. It must have been a fantasy in his head and not a memory at all.

"You okay?" Rey asked gently, and he wondered how much she had picked up. Still, his hands remained steady and the ship broke atmosphere as smoothly as she ever had. If anyone on the planet's surface saw them now, they would be nothing more than a shooting star.

He hadn't asked Rey where they were going next. He knew she didn't have an answer. _Away,_ said the whisper of her thoughts. _Adrift again,_ but Ben had something else in mind. He hoped she would like it. The Force tightened around him eagerly as he set a course for the unknown regions and sent the Falcon blazing into hyperspace.

.

"It's called Ilum," he told Rey as she gazed down on the planet they were in orbit around. "It's in your books, remember?"

"The crystal planet."

"You need one to finish your staff. Are you ready?"

"I guess I better be," was her answer, and as they descended, her eyes never left the white expanse below.

Ilum was cold, swaddled permanently in a layer of ice and snow. The Falcon had, among its emergency supplies, a selection of gear for extreme weather, and though even the largest of the insulated suits was slightly too tight on Ben, it would suffice. He was more worried about Rey with her lifelong acclimation to desert heat. While she fidgeted with the garments, he dug a little further into the storage crates until he found the old, ratty cloak he remembered. It had been one of Luke's, heavy and durable. He settled it over Rey's shoulders and she smiled a thank-you, their hands coming together to pull the hood over her brow.

"Have you ever been here before?" she asked.

"Yes. With Luke." There were other planets where kyber crystals grew, though few and far between, but Ilum was traditional. Luke had wanted to reclaim all he could of his Jedi heritage and to help Ben do the same, so to Ilum they had come.

"Good, then we won't get lost."

Ben's lips twitched, but he bit back the self-degrading joke about his talent for getting 'lost'. "The crystals will guide you better than I can," he deferred instead, and then he indulged in another moment of looking into her eyes, of basking in the quiet warmth of their connection before he turned and led the way out into the cold.

Chewie, though well-equipped to handle the weather, had opted to stay on the ship with C-3PO and leave this outing to the Force users it was meant for.

The air was still when Ben stepped outside. Great spires and planes of ice captured and amplified the starlight, creating the impression that the planet was glowing from within. Beside him, Rey held her cloak tight around her and stared.

"That's the entrance," he told her, pointing to their left, to the shattered ruins built into the mountainside. "When the Jedi used it, it would have opened and closed with the Force to allow passage. The Empire destroyed it when they came to collect crystals for the Death Stars."

He could feel Rey's sentimental sorrow over the loss, though it had happened before either of them were born. "If the Empire raided this place for crystals, will there be any left for us?"

"Don't you hear them?" He let her concentrate, waited for the shift of realization on her face, and explained. "The Empire took the largest crystals for their weapons. They had no use for small ones."

"But small ones are exactly what we need," Rey concluded, and took the lead.

Where Rey had felt sorrow as she passed the ruins of the entrance, Ben felt vindication. The rituals of the Jedi were trappings of the past. The way ahead lay open wide for whatever they chose to make of it. For whatever they chose to make of the future.

Two steps across the threshold, Rey stopped, and so he stopped with her. "How do I choose a crystal?"

"You listen," Ben answered. "The crystal will choose you."

Rey closed her eyes, face scrunching up a little. Her head turned, slowly, tracking something, and then she took a step.

When Ben didn't follow, she looked back at him, but he shook his head. "Keep going. It's calling you, not me."

Biting her lip, she pressed onward, one step at a time. In a moment, she had ducked into a narrow, rock-walled corridor, rounded a turn, and was out of sight.

Ben waited.

The crystals sang.

He wasn't aware, at first, that he was moving. It came as a surprise when he noticed that his feet were carrying him toward another of the cavern's offshoot passages, and that even as he realized this, he was still walking.

Ben had a working lightsaber. It was a violent, unstable thing, but it was powerful. He'd had no intention of replacing it. Not yet. He was here for Rey, but the call of the crystal was unmistakable, so he let it lead him.

The tunnel twisted and branched, it widened and shrank, and then it opened into a tall, slanted chamber that breached the mountain wall above him, opening a window out to the cold night sky.

Looking closer at the straightness and regularity of the shape, the smooth inverted facets of the walls, Ben understood. A crystal had grown in the space where he stood—a single pillar of kyber jutting out of the mountain’s side like a spire. It had surely been used to arm one of the Death Stars, taken in its entirety, leaving not a shard behind. The chamber was barren now.

And yet the song of a crystal had called him here.

He stepped into the center of the hollow space and listened. He waited...

And he froze, stiff, when a gut-wrenchingly familiar presence flooded his senses.

"You know, I didn't sign up for this Jedi ghost business," said Han Solo’s voice behind him. "It should be Luke here. He'd know what to say."

Ben breathed in. The cold air chilled his lungs. "Then why is it you?" He formed the question carefully, measuring the words out one at a time in an effort to prevent them from tumbling over each other, or from sticking in his throat and choking him to death.

"Because you're here, I wager. Like I said, it wasn't my idea."

It was such a typical disregard for matters of cosmic importance that Ben's irritation brought him to his feet and turned him around before he could stop himself. The sight of his father, transparent as the cavern’s now-sparse crystals, stole the retort from of his tongue.

"You're looking better," said Han, softness layered under gruffness. "Last I saw you, you didn't look like you'd slept in days." With the next question, he waved a hand at his own incorporeal face, making a slashing motion. "Where'd you get the mark?"

Ben didn't realize that his own hand was moving until his fingertips found the groove of the scar. He let them stay there a moment, pressing into the numb, ridged flesh. "Rey."

"So you deserved it, then."

"I did."

"How is she?"

"she's fine." It came put before he could question why he was answering to Han. "We're..."

"Yeah, yeah, I can tell." The ghost of his father waggled his fingers in the air, looking irritated. "All this Force stuff. I can see it. You two are connected by something big."

"We balanced the Force."

"Huh. That sounds important." It was a tone that, in the past, Ben would have taken for disinterest. It wasn’t, though. He understood now, only just coming to the realization but feeling like he’d known it all along. Han didn’t understand the Force, and so, in his hard-headed way, he shrugged it off, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care.

"I killed Snoke," Ben added, not knowing why, but needing to say it.

Han nodded, or perhaps he was bowing his head. "Good," he said, and the gruffness was receding, leaving the softness raw and bare. "I'm sorry...” he added, slower. Uncomfortable. Unsure. “I mean, I wish I could have done it for you. I wish I could have saved you."

"Rey saved me."

"Well, tell her I said thanks."

"I will."

"And tell Chewie and your mom hi for me."

Ben scowled at a spot near the ghost's left shoulder and asked, leaning on sardonic bitterness to give him the strength to respond. “Any other messages you want me to deliver from the grave?"

"Yeah, one more." He paused until, driven by impatience, Ben met his eyes. "Tell my son," said Han, "that I love him... and I'm proud of him."

That was too much, too far. Ben looked away, trying to make himself feel anger and only achieving anguish. What he said next was a whisper, crawling pitifully out of his throat without his consent. "I'm sorry."

"I know, kid. I know."

Ben would have liked that to be the end of it. He kept his eyes cast down, waiting to feel his father's presence fade, but the moment stretched on until it was as awkward as it was painful.

"I, uh..." Han shuffled and scratched the back of his head as if he still had a physical body and all the petty, mortal irritations that entailed. "You're here for a reason. Better get to it."

"Rey is finding a new kyber crystal," Ben answered dully.

"That's why Rey's here. I meant you."

Ben looked at him again, brow furrowing. "What are you talking about?"

Han gestured vaguely at the space around them. "You need a new one too, don't you?"

Ben took the saber hilt from his belt and held it before him, weighing it in both hands, failing to realize until too late how the pose mirrored his last encounter with his father. "I thought it's what called me to this place, but there are no crystals here. Just you."

"Huh. Well, I don't know much about kyber crystals, but maybe... keep trying? Maybe I can help."

Ben bit his tongue on an expression of his doubt and focused instead on discerning the will of the Force. He had heard a crystal sing. He had followed it here. He'd found a ghost, but no crystals except for...

He narrowed his eyes. He said nothing else to the waiting spirit, but sat down cross-legged and held the scorched and battered saber up in front of him. He had found reference, once or twice, to what he was about to attempt. It had not been a common or well-understood practice, but it had been done, if his research sources were to be believed. It could be done again.

Hyper-aware of the Force energy as it traveled like blood through his arteries to gather at his fingertips, he levitated the lightsaber before him and, piece by piece, he dismantled it. The crystal's glare, as light first struck it, stung his eyes. The effect faded as it rotated in the air and that particularly reflective facet turned away, but he couldn't help taking it a little personally. The kyber had every reason to be vengeful. An dog beaten into submission, trained with hurt instead of trust, may bite its own master as soon as be turned on an enemy.

"I don't know how to begin."

"Well, don't look at me," Han said.

Ben glared at him.

Han sighed, which in itself was ridiculous, seeing as dead things didn't breathe. "Luke would probably say something like trust your instincts, so... I don't know. Do that."

The annoying part was that it was sound advice. Using the Force, in Ben's experience, was largely intuitive. Most of the rules had been established by people, not by the Force itself. When one set aside the overcomplicated and restrictive traditions, the only thing left that mattered was intent.

He examined the crystal he had mutilated, studying the breaks and the instabilities, the diversions of energy. The Force, for all its versatility, wasn't much good at forging pieces of a solid material back together, but that was in the case of non-living things, and kyber crystals were very much alive. What Ben wanted to do was closer to healing a wound than to repairing a broken object. He knew that healing with the Force was something the Jedi had once practiced, but Luke had not known the trick and Ben had never tried to learn.

He tried now. He focused on the crystal's wounds and thought of his own. He thought of kind hands and the unexpected warmth of forgiveness. He thought of hope. He thought of scars that never faded, but that healed all the same. He tried not to reverse what he had done to the kyber, for that was an impossibility, but with the specter of his father watching over him, he tried to help it regrow.

.

When Ben emerged from his isolated chamber, it was to find the rest of the cavern a riot of raucous energies. The remaining crystals had unfurled to the presence of Force users like flowers unfurling in the sun, so bright and reverberating that it was almost difficult to feel Rey amid the mess of it, and might have been impossible if not for the bond between them. Even with that, it was like keeping track of someone while divided by a crowd.

It was the overwhelming voices of the crystals that made it difficult, too, to distinguish why his sense of her felt wrong.

It was fear, he determined. Not pain—not in the physical sense—but a horror that rose like a slow wave above the background interference and crested into frantic need. He was on his feet and trying to hone in on her location when she came to him, not with the panic of running from something, but with the determination of running toward it.

He caught her by the shoulders as she all but bulled into him, and for just an instant she was struggling for freedom before she came to her senses and gripped him tight. She was shivering in his hands. "They're in trouble," she said, and it was a quiet statement only because she lacked the breath to shout.

"Who?"

"Finn. The Resistance. We have to go." She was clutching a crystal shard so tightly in her right hand that he feared she might cut herself with it, but at least it meant they had found what they came for.

"Go where?"

"Coruscant."

He wondered if their lives would always be this, pulled into action by every summons from Rey's misfit Resistance. He might have resented it, but after Han, he had not the emotional energy left to spare.

.

There was half a galaxy to cross between Ilum and the city planet. Even with the most direct and well-traveled hyperlanes, it took time.

Rey put that time to good use.

"It's yellow. What does that mean?"

Ben cast his eyes over the golden beam of plasma, measuring it against the blue one that sprung from the staff's opposite end. "Traditionally, it was the color of a sentinal's blade."

"Sentinal?"

"A keeper of balance."

"I guess that makes sense." She took one last thoughtful look at it, and then extinguished both blades and tested the weight of the shortened staff in her hands. "I'm glad it's finally finished."

"Me too." He had failed to tell her about his own encounter in the cavern, not for a will to deceive her or to keep it from her, but because he couldn't find the words. The crystal was one thing. She would doubtless be proud of him. The trouble was that if he talked about the crystal, he would think about Han, and then he would talk about Han, and Rey would be reminded of the day she had watched Han die.

"Ben, what's wrong?"

Of course, even with his inner shields up, the Bond between them revealed too much.

Or perhaps it was simply his face that had betrayed him. "I...." He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed. "I found something too."

Rey waited, patient, giving him time to compose himself. Perhaps, if he was careful, he wouldn't have to say anything yet.

The healed kyber crystal, when he ignited it to show her, was white.


	7. Chapter 7

It was near midday where they arrived on Coruscant, but the sky was full of smoke and lit from below. A city block—one of the great cuboid towers that held entire neighborhoods inside—had gone up in flames, hundreds of stories collapsed down on each other. Ben wondered idly what the death toll was.

 _"Riots and a coordinated bomb strike,"_ Chewbacca had reported after ending a comm call with Poe Dameron. Coruscant had been a head of the Empire and had remained a haven for sympathizers throughout the New Republic's brief reign. Neo-Imperial factions had welcomed the coming of the First Order. Now they stood to hold off its death. The Resistance, of course, had jumped right into the middle of it.

According to Poe's report, Finn was on the ground with a squad of ex-Stormtroopers. They were trying to keep Imperial terrorists pinned down while teams of rescue workers got the damage under control. Last anyone had heard, Finn's team was in a deadlock.

Rey was going to get him out.

The Falcon set down on a dock that had been cleared hastily upon notice of their arrival. It seemed the Resistance still welcomed Rey, even when it meant they had to tolerate the former Kylo Ren. There was a selfish, jealous part of him that would have liked it better if they rejected her—if the friends he resented proved themselves worthy of his resent—if Rey had no one else in the galaxy but him. He knew these thoughts for what they were, however. He recognized the lure of the darkness there and he squeezed it down, stuffed it away into one of the shadowy back corners of his heart. Rejection would devastate Rey. She would still have Ben, of course, and she would recover, but it would be a suffering she did not deserve. It was not the first time he’d had to remind himself of that.

Ben did not recognize the man who greeted Rey when they exited the Falcon, himself and Chewie taking up bodyguard positions at her flanks while Threepio shuffled along in the rear. The stranger ushered them briskly onward, brandishing a hand-held holo projector and calling up a map of the district as he explained the situation. Ben listened to him talk, but swept his gaze over their surroundings, taking tactical note of everything he saw. The Resistance had established a battlefield-style base, all crated supplies and armed guards, laid out over the flat top of another of the square towers and spilling into the open doors of a warehouse which, he assumed, was serving as their temporary headquarters. The assumption was based mostly on the fact that he could feel his mother's presence there. It was reflex, then, to reach out and touch her mind, a wordless acknowledgment like the passing brush of his hand on her arm. He received the same from her, curious and welcoming, blameless and without fear, but she did not show herself and their escort did not take them inside.

Someday, Ben thought in a strangely painless moment, they might have the time and leisure to salvage whatever was left between them. Someday, he might actually want that.

From the edge of the flat rooftop, they could see the damage. Ben felt Rey's dismay as she got a clearer look than what had been allowed from the Falcon’s cockpit during their descent. It was not an even collapse, one corner of the massive structure sagging lower than the rest. A wide road lay two or three hundred floors down, and the section nearest the building had been turned into a labyrinth of rubble. This was only the upper level of the city, Ben knew, but it was impossible from where they stood to tell how much deeper the damage extended.

"We have one team helping with the evacuation and another still in combat," explained their guide, pointing to a spot on his map. "You'll find them here. It's in the mid-level and not easy to get to."

"We can get there," Rey said, and she sounded like she would lift buildings if she had to.

A short ride in an airspeeder took them to the upper street, but from there, due to blocked entries and risk of further collapse—and probably the pilot's need to get Kylo Ren out of his vehicle—they were expected to navigate the rest on foot.

Moving as one, Rey and Ben vaulted out of the roofless speeder, checked their weapons at hip and at shoulder, and stepped side by side into the eerie stillness of the building's corpse. Although there was rubble at the entrance, the corridor before them was clear, though a fine, pale dust tickled their throats and cast a haze over the scarce few lights still shining.

It was a loud sort of silence. Every creak, every footstep, every hum of electricity was obtrusive. There was something else, too, though Ben would have dismissed it if not for its familiarity. It was a presence, a voice in the Force, soft and demanding, whispering in his ear and tugging at the air around him. He had felt it before, on the Falcon, and perhaps at other times and places, less obvious. Hearing voices, after all, was hardly new.

If Rey heard it too, or felt its pressure in some other way, she dismissed it, and Ben found he wasn't surprised. When Rey set her mind on saving someone, all else became trivial.

In the second lobby they came to, there was an elevator shaft, but the doors were jammed open and the elevator itself was nowhere in sight. Several floors above, the shaft was cut through and blocked by a slanting sheet of duracrete. The drop below was a pit that ended in darkness.

"Do you think we could...?" Rey didn't finish, but she didn't need to.

"We can. Do you trust yourself?"

She wrinkled her nose. "You mean do I trust the Force?"

"Same question."

"I think so..."

"You can do it." Ben had no doubt of that. "But if you fall, I'll catch you."

He could sense the nervousness in her, but she said, "Okay,” and as one, they turned to face each other and joined hands. The task ahead would be easier done as a singular, concerted effort. He was caught off guard by the smile she flashed him, and then their feet were lifting off the ground, bodies moving as lightly as the dust, drifting out over the abyssal drop below. Buoyed above death only by their joint control over the Force, they floated downward.

By the time their boots touched the bottom of the elevator shaft, they could hear the fighting. Sporadic blaster shots echoed from elsewhere in the structure, still far off by the sound of it. Rey didn't stop to linger over the success of their shortcut, so neither did Ben. Unhooking her staff from over her shoulder, she took the lead and he followed.

The interior gardens, shops, and roads were thankfully abandoned, though there was no sign that either the combat or the collapse had reached that level. Unlike above, all of the lights still functioned, and the emptiness was only stranger for it. Rey didn't stop moving, but her eyes wandered, and Ben reminded himself to take her on a tour of a safer part of the city later, when their mission was over. He had not visited Coruscant for several years himself and he had no particularly fond memories of it, but Rey enjoyed any chance to see a new part of the galaxy, and Ben enjoyed making Rey smile.

That was all the time he allowed for reverie. As the community spaces transformed into residential apartments, closed doors in long hallways, they picked up their stride. The shooting was closer, though rhythmic in the way of cover fire, lacking the tighter patterns of a productive assault. It seemed the deadlock still stood.

They came upon it in the wide hallway that wrapped around the exterior of the building. The Resistance were lined up behind two barricades built mostly from the scraps of a blown-out wall. The enemy was outside under the artificial light of mid-level Coruscant, spread out against the neighboring block. Their shelter took the form of kiosk shops and overturned speeders, and above, a few gunners perched behind the rail of an overhead walkway.

Rey knocked a piece of shrapnel with her boot, sending it clanging and rattling across the floor. The nearest of the soldiers turned to look.

"Rey!" It was Finn who called her, crouched in the lee of the forward-most barricade and gesturing wildly for her join him. "They said you were coming! Can't tell you how good it is to see you."

Quick as a tooka, she ducked low and darted to his side. She wasn’t smiling, but had the situation been any better, she would have been. "I missed you too. Now what do you need me to do?"

"We need..."

Ben knew what they needed, and it was to end this now.

"Let me," he said, and stepped out into the open, past the safety of the barricade and through the blown-out wall. Enemy blasters fired. Bolts froze in midair.

"Ben!"

"They may try to cut through," he warned. He didn’t turn back to see her face, nor those of the former Stormtroopers behind him. "Be ready."

He heard the breath she took, felt that she had accepted the plan and was preparing to play her part. "Send them my way." There was a note of bloodthirst in her voice that made his guts squirm—and not in an unpleasant way.

He said nothing else. Knuckles white around the hilt of his saber, he walked into the open street. A second volley of blaster bolts zinged off of the star-white blade, returned with fatal precision to those who had fired them. Before the soldiers on the ground could regroup and fire again, he leapt onto the balcony above. Here there were more guns pointed his way, more bolts fired, fruitless, futile, and then there were screams and panic and the smell of plasma burns.

A few of the enemy got through to run into Rey's defense, but only because he allowed it. The Force was a roiling, billowing wall around him, visible to his naked eye as shimmering, glassy waves. No hand nor blaster could touch him. He had never been so strong. This was beyond the Dark Side and the Light. The terrorists before him were as helpless as insects in a hurricane.

The Force pulled his attention upward, ringing like a chime form a place out of sight on the upper level. There was a low, resounding boom, muffled by layers of duracrete and air, and everything around him shook. Next came a series of heavy snaps, sounding nearer than the explosion. The city block where Ben had pursued the Imperialists, neighbor to the one already damaged, let out a telltale groan.

He dropped down off the balcony and strode back across the wide street to where Rey waited.

"—another bomb," Finn was saying, wide-eyed as he looked down at his comm unit. "We need to get out of here."

"We need to empty that building," someone said beside him.

Before Finn could answer, a second explosion roared above them, louder, nearly deafening, and a wide, dark crack split the upper level street that had served as their artificial sky. Sunlight and shrapnel streamed down around them.

"Cover!" Finn ushered his team farther back into the shelter—dubious as it was—of the first building. They moved as they had been trained, in unity, and for one half-moment Ben didn't know whether he was fighting alongside the Resistance or the First Order.

Then the newly bombed block buckled and he and Rey threw up their hands to catch it… and the floor above it, and the hundreds upon hundreds above that.

At first there was effort and strain, more than he had ever experienced. He couldn’t move or draw breath, he couldn’t think except to focus on that singular task. Then Rey reached out to him, too far away to grasp his hand, but never too far to touch his mind. They wove together, the Force an extra limb between them, and the effort melted away. It was as easy as a thought to hold the weight of Coruscant above them.

Were it up to him alone, Ben might have simply kept their own path clear and left the rest to fall, but he was in Rey's mind and he knew her will, and she had heard the concern of Finn’s soldiers. There were people inside. They would be crushed.

It was instinct that guided them as they left their bodies behind, flying on a tether, weaving their way up through the solid layers of plaster and steel and duracrete, finding the breaks, the points of weakness, and mending as they went. It was a patch job, beams and pillars shifted to hold weight, rubble pushed aside or eased off of unsound surfaces. Up and up they went, finding the layers that had already collapsed and lifting them, expanding them with a thought. There was life all around them, frantic and fleeing, or stationary and fading fast. It spurred Rey to move faster, and Ben with her, until the entire structure stood, swaying gently, crumbling and impossible, held up in a web of Force and of will.

There was no sense of the passage of time as there was no sense of effort. Only when every remaining spark of life had moved away from the danger did Rey and Ben begin to extract themselves, to unweave the net, leaving floors to wobble and fall one by one, slowly and methodically, drawing their awareness back floor by floor to where their bodies waited.

Ben exhaled. He took a backward step and then another, felt Rey moving with him. The sunlight through the cracks overhead was dimmer than it had been when they started, laced with the orange-gold of evening. He felt light-headed and numb, stiff from standing for however long their task had taken. He had a sense that they walked a while, together, or perhaps floated, but he couldn't remember when or where they stopped.

.

Ben awoke all at once on a pallet on the floor of the Resistance-occupied warehouse. He knew it for that location because of the high, bare ceiling above… and because of his mother's weathered face looking down at him.

Leia stood with her arms crossed and her expression pinched in a familiar frown. "Hello, Ben. Still with us, I see."

He wasn't sure if she was commenting on his state of consciousness or his current allegiance. He didn't want to ask. "General."

"Mother," she corrected. "I wouldn't mind 'Mom' either, but that might be asking too much."

"Rey", he called instead, but when he tried to push himself up, it was only to fall back under a wave of dizziness. He felt that if he tried again, he would be sick to his stomach, and he absolutely did not want to show that kind of weakness in front of his mother.

"She's fine, I think," Leia reassured, though he didn't like the lack of perfect certainty. "Still unconscious."

He could feel her in the Force, still blazing. With a turn of his head, he could see her. Like him, Rey had been laid out on a soldier's pallet, motionless but alive. Willing himself to be calm, he asked, "what happened?"

"You might be able to explain that better than I can," Leia said.

"No, I mean..." He tried to move again and found the dizziness lessened a little. Slowly, taking long, careful breaths, he rolled over onto his hands and knees and moved closer to Rey. "...How did we get here?"

"According to the witnesses, you came flying up over the wall like you had hover-boots on. They said you were unconscious before your feet touched the ground. I hope you don't mind me accommodating you." The addition was sardonic, but it comforted him, made him feel less compromised, though he thought it should have done the opposite.

"Thank you. Mother."

"My pleasure.” She sounded wry but sincere. "I'll leave you two alone now, but I would like to have a debriefing later. I need something to tell everyone who saw what you did."

Ben didn't offer an answer and Leia walked away without one, presumably taking his silence for consent. It was fine, he decided. They could explain it together when Rey woke up, and then they could leave, and it would be fine.

Called by his thoughts, she began to rouse, slower than she would have from an ordinary sleep. Acting on an animal desire for closeness, too worn to care about the questionable state of their privacy, he pulled her into his arms while she was still coming to, felt her sigh against him and press her face into his shirt.

"Ben..."

"Rey."

The Force pulsed around them, pressed in on them, insistent. Rey was flushed, not pale as he had expected her to be. Her heartbeat seemed too fast for her recumbent state.

"... Wha' happened."

"You saved them."

 _"We_ did," she corrected, and he let her have that distinction.

The Force whispered in his ear and tugged at his clothing. Rey squirmed in his embrace and then pushed herself away from him. “I feel funny."

"I know." There was a light behind her eyes, a radiance barely contained beneath her skin. Ben felt the same pressure, the same pull, making his head spin and his stomach churn.

"What's happening?" Rey asked, and there was a knot of fear like a tumor in the Force around her.

Ben had a dreaded suspicion. It came to the forefront of his mind all at once, but he felt it had been building a long time. The process had been too simple. The details had not added up. He should have pursued it further, but he had let arrogance and overconfidence lure him into a state of ease. Rey, he thought, would have known better had their places been reversed—had she been the one with more than just his word on the purpose of the ritual on Arrakis. She was more cautious than him about such things. With just a little more research, Rey might have known to question how so much power chained within two mortal beings could in any way be considered a balance…

Her hands were shaking when he took them. He realized belatedly that his were to. The Force was giving them no more time to dawdle. His mother would have to wait for her debriefing. "We're going back to the temple,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was kind of a long delay for such a short final chapter. Few reasons. Last couple chemo sessions messed me up good, but hey, they were the last! (not dying yet).  
> Reason number 2 was that I went back through the triptych for a final edit. Damocles and Orpheus have just been adjusted slightly for sentence flow and comprehension, but Eros felt especially sparse and has had a little more description added throughout. I feel much more confident about it now, tbh.  
> Reason number 3 was a video game release I'd been waiting about 13 years for....  
> and the final reason was giving myself time to finish [a triptych for the Triptych](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/504992)  
> 

Rey felt wound tight, a wire twisted to snapping point, a speeder engine burning battlecruiser fuel, and nothing she did helped. In the brief span of time following her exertions on Coruscant, the taut-string tension inside her had built until her mind and body felt fit to pull themselves apart. Ben felt it too, she knew, but he had more experience in coping with the brutal tides of the Force. He endured, stoic, while she struggled not to panic.

It was strange to be so acutely aware of the change, because in hindsight, she had felt it building ever since the convergence. Whispers and tugs. A pressure in the air. It had been subtle at first, and it hadn't surprised her to feel different after what she and Ben had done. She'd told herself it was fine. It was normal, as much as any part of what had happened was normal.

What it had become, though, couldn't possibly be fine. It hurt too much.

The ship was in hyperspace on its way to Arrakis. They had left Chewbacca and Threepio behind. They had left without a word. Now there was nothing to do but wait, which was the last thing Rey wanted to do.

She sat in the middle of the main hold, seeking comfort in the cold solidity of the metal floor—seeking, but not finding. She twitched and sighed and squirmed and finally, desperate for release, she threw out a hand and ripped the dejarik table off its bolts with her mind, smashing it against the hull. It eased the pressure for no more than a blink and she hung her head in frustration. So raw and scattered were her senses that she didn't notice Ben had come back from the cockpit and was kneeling in front of her. She became aware of his proximity—abruptly, intensely, electrically aware—only when he touched her hand.

"Slow breaths," he instructed, and mostly failed to set an example.

"I tried slow breaths." She had tried meditating, eating, and repair work too. The first had been impossible, the second unsatisfying, and her hands had been shaking too much for the last.

"Then focus on me," Ben said, and he lifted her hands to kiss them as he liked to do, one and then the other. The tense and tingly feeling that evoked, at least, was a pleasant one.

Rey chased it, diving in to catch Ben's lips and kiss him with a ferocity that surprised them both. She made the feel of him her whole galaxy. She escaped into it and Ben followed her. His hands wandered up the small of her back, kneading through her shirt, then teasing the edge of it out from under her belt and sliding under, warm skin on skin. Rey arched into the touch, breathing out his name.

"Rey..." he answered. "I want to try again."

She knew what he meant, but she asked anyway. "What?"

"I want to..." he faltered then, turning awkward, visibly struggling over the cliche, the inadequacy of spoken language. He sounded younger when he said, "I want to make love with you."

Rey studied his face, marking the slight flush there, the vulnerability in his eyes, and wondered what it had taken to prepare himself, and how much of it he had kept hidden from her. "You don't have to," she said, although she very much wanted him to.

"I want to.”

"Okay."

He kissed her again, slow and purposeful, first on the lips, and then, with a tilt of his head, on the jaw, on the tender side of her neck. He kissed her until she gasped at the heat and pressure of his mouth. His hands had come down to rest on the ridges of her hips, applying a weight that made her breath come short. That same tension, that tightness still thrummed through her, but now it was matched by another. Now it harmonized. This was what she needed—not a cure, no, but a sweet balm. It was carnal, spontaneous, and not remotely the right time, but it was perfect. It was right. She coiled the fabric of his shirt in her hands, meaning to pull it up, but he stopped her.

"Let me." His voice had gone low and husky, but there was a timidity there too, and Rey understood. She put her hands down. She sat as still as she could, relaxed as much as she was able. She squeaked a little when he scooped her into his arms and stood with her, but she quieted as he carried her to their quarters and set her down on the larger of the two beds. She gave him all control of the situation, made no attempt to hurry him when he hesitated nor to touch him except when he guided her hands. This was a patience she was glad to offer, and he did not leave her wanting, nor, in the end, himself. Awash in the light that thrived between them, he found his way.

.

The Force pulled and pushed at her still, a constant, gnawing presence, but Ben's distraction had served its purpose, and that was only the least of it. Ben himself was like she had never seen him, transformed by the victory over his trauma, transcended much as he had been after the first time at the Arrakis temple. He rested on his side with his head in her lap, a hulking beast rendered tame, breath slow, the dizzying width of his bare shoulders under her hand. He didn't speak, so neither did she, but with the bond wide-open between them there was no need. They communicated in feelings, in pulses of love and wholeness and comfort. They were, to Rey, like two parts of a single being, connected by the same nerves. The same heart. Soon they would reach their destination and, to whatever end, they would finish what they had started, but for now, if only for a little while, they had something that was almost like peace.

.

The temple on Arrakis was as they had left it, or so it seemed at first glance. It looked unchanged, but before her feet had crossed the threshold, Rey recognized the thrumming tension that emanated from the structure. It reverberated in the humid air, almost audible, almost visible, easily touchable. It was the same tension that threatened to pull every molecule of her being apart. Once under the shadow of the ruin, Rey didn't think she would be capable of turning back if she tried. The Force dragged her onward like a rope around her middle. The thought of fighting it was daunting, and more than that, detestable. As they descended the stairs, down and down and down, she was thrown all but bodily into the memory of their last time there—the desperation, the epiphany, the exhaustion and the overwhelming relief when it was over. Ben must have sensed her thoughts or had the same, for he pressed closer and put a hand on her back. It helped, a little.

"Do you know what to do?" she asked him.

"No," he said, open and honest and far less worried than she was. That helped too.

When at last, together, they stepped into the center of the underground chamber and the Force hung like a waiting creature above them, he turned to face her. He took her hands. He said, in that traitorously soft voice of his, "Rey..."

"Hmm?"

"I love you."

It was to her own surprise that she found the declaration funny. She smiled at him and said, "I know," and that was still the greatest wonder of them all—to love and to be loved—to feel belonging—to feel a sense of _family_ , not a wish or a daydream, but real. There would be no more waiting for Rey.

Ben kissed her, warm and full of promise.

He kissed her and the energy within them billowed. It swelled and whirled, becoming a hurricane of which they were the center. She wondered how long it would go on, how much more it would build. She braced herself, prepared to withstand an ordeal like none she had yet known. Instead, with an abruptness that left her staggering, the Force dissipated. Like dust, it scattered, and she was left behind, empty, bereft, and at once solid and grounded and whole.

.

On Coruscant, Finn paused mid-step and lifted his face to the horizon. A new awareness was seeping into him, subtle, but impossible to miss. Whatever it was, it was strange and familiar all at once, like hearing a voice he hadn't heard since he was a child. Around him, the world seemed more vibrant, more aware, alight with a sense of _life_. He felt connected to it all in a way he never had before. He knew, somehow, that this was that energy—the legendary Force—which Rey had such an affinity for. He didn’t know how or why, but it had to be.

Inside, Chewbacca and Leia stopped mid-conversation. Chewie was experiencing the same thing Finn was, in the same moment, but for Leia it was different. For Leia, it was as if something had left her—not all of hat something, but enough. Enough to let her breathe a sigh of relief, for Leia had never wanted the Force. She wondered if her son was to thank.

On a planet without space travel, in cities and towns tucked away between desert and scraggy forest, a spontaneous celebration was starting. Their seers had told them of a day when the energy that blessed and cursed them would at last divide itself evenly across all living things, taking from those who had excess and giving to those who had little. There would be no more imbalance, no more advantage to a few at the pain of many. No longer would mystics use their power for tyranny, for there would be no more mystics, and everyone would be mystic. There would be equality.

.

"I can still feel it," Rey mused, looking out into the Arrakis jungle from where she and Ben sat atop the Falcon's ramp.

"Me too."

"I can... feel you, feel everything just like I could before. But I can't use it." It was a loss, but then, Rey had lived most of her life without conscious awareness of the Force. It wasn't as great a loss for her as it must have been for Ben. And yet, despite that, all she could feel from him was the lifting of a long-borne weight and—for what might have been the first time—happiness.

"You can still use it," he said. "Just not the way you could before."

"You know what I mean." She lifted a hand in the air, palm up. The other half of the broken crystal sat there—the half not used in her staff. It was still cracked and fragile, still faintly glowing, seemingly unchanged from the day she had given up on it and packed it away. She narrowed her eyes at it and concentrated. She tried to provoke a response from it. She tried to levitate it. She thought about healing it, though she had no idea how Ben had done so with his own crystal. She tried to control the Force in every way she knew how, and every way failed. She might as well have been shouting her commands at a wall. After a moment, when she didn't stop trying, Ben took her hand and guided it down, squeezed it with that gentleness that still surprised her.

"It's better this way.”

She looked at him, trying to read his face. Through their Bond, he was radiating only resignation and peace. Still, she couldn't dismiss her doubts. "Is it?"

There was certainty in his voice, and an echo of old pain, scarred but healing, when he said, "it is."

Rey believed him.


End file.
